Recently there’s been a lot of talk about Russia, and what happened at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

In an article released by the New York Times, director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov admitted to there being a “state-sponsored doping” happening during the last winter Olympics. This elaborate scandal came after Russia placed sixth in the 2012 winter Olympics, and was apparently a plan formulated with the intention to dominate— meaning that it’s no surprise the amount of medals won by Russian athletes in Sochi.

Rodchenkov admitted that he assisted in switching out hundreds of tainted urine samples from athletes with urine that had been provided months earlier. This well carried out plan involved a spreadsheet of athletes, with Rodchenkov tasked with keeping track of which athletes were winning medals, so he knew which urine samples to switch out.

The switching would happen with what Rodchenkov presumed was someone working for the Russian government, where they would meet in the middle of the night and pass the samples through a hole in the wall of one of the rooms. Whoever the man that was helping Rodchenkov was had found a way to open the locked containers that held the urine samples; these containers were marked with a specific code for each athlete, and had a complicated lock that was not able to be opened by the average person. This meant that the tainted samples were passed to through the hole to the man, who then (somehow) managed to open them and passed them back through the hole to Rodchenkov. He would then dump the tainted urine, clean out the container, and replace it with the clean urine— which was also provided by this mysterious man.

Rodchenkov also admitted to providing a concoction of banned drugs to some of the athletes so that they could recover from intense training faster. The three drugs provided to these athletes were metenolone, trenbolone, and oxandrolone— anabolic steroids that were mixed with alcohol to allow the drugs to work faster.

According to the Associated Press, this may lead to various complications for not only the athletes who are caught having taken the drugs, but various Russian sports teams as well. Thomas Bach of the International Association of Athletics Federation says that the results of the current investigation could lead to athletes receiving lifetime bans from the Olympics, and even full teams being barred from competing; accompanying these revelations will be fines to those involved. Right now there is a ban on Russia from competing in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and it will be decided on June 17 whether or not that ban will be lifted.

The United States Justice Department is also launching their own investigation to see if there was any connection to the country in this scandal. This connection could anything from someone in the United States being involved in the scandal, or if an American bank was used to conduct various transactions. Various Russian athletes have also travelled to the United States for competitions, posing the question of whether or not drugs were used in those situations too.

The scandal is one of the largest and most successful in sports history, and may not involve just the Sochi Olympics. Rodchenkov also admitted that some drugs were used by Russian athletes in the 2012 London Olympics. It poses many questions about what athletes are actually being honest in what drugs they’re consuming, and if their medals were actually earned. Expect potential changes in the athlete drug tests in the Olympic games coming this August, or even further in the future.