We set out from his home in the early afternoon 11 days ago. His wife packed food into the cooler, the boy slid into the back seat and from there to Shelbyville, Indiana, 1,100 miles of Midwest highway. Eight and a half hours’ driving for two consecutive days. Another 17 hours would get us back.
Twelve months ago we’d done an almost identical trip. It was one of the highlights of the sporting year, even if the best bits weren’t about sport. The thing about travelling across the Great Plains is that you see what the first settlers saw; the same vastness, the same brown prairie grasses, the same barrenness, the same clear blue sky. We said we’d do it again. Here we are.
Vitaly Stepanov’s hands are on the wheel. He was the most important whistleblower in the story of Russia’s fall from sporting grace in 2014. The kid in the back is his 11-year-old son, Robert. I am here not as a journalist but their friend.
STEPANOV FAMILY
You count the miles not in tens but hundreds. Conversation is an option to be used discreetly. Those who remember the road trip in the Coen brothers’ iconic movie Fargo will recall the two dim-witted criminals, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare). On their road trip, Carl tries to force conversation.
“You ever been to Minneapolis?”
“Nope.”
“Would it kill you to say something?”
“I did.”
“ ‘Nope.’ That’s the first thing you’ve said in the last four hours. That’s a fountain of conversation there, buddy. That’s a geyser.”
Vitaly...
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