Nothing the weightlifting world didn’t already know, but for the first time it’s (somewhat) openly talked about by coaches and athletes.
Money quotes (there are too many quotable things in the story):
Aghasi Aghasyan, a former member of the Armenian national weightlifting team, confirmed that Armenian athletes who might test positive for drugs were screened to protect them from consequences on the world stage. “We’d send our samples before the competitions. If they saw, for example, that my sample was clean, I’d be sent to compete,” he said. “If another weightlifter wasn’t clean, he wouldn’t go.”
“Everything was done so that no one was caught. I can’t say for certain who sent the test samples — but the [Armenian Weightlifting Federation] was working to see that no one got caught.”
All of the samples were sent to Grigory Rodchenkov, former director of Russia’s anti-doping center in Moscow; though some of the athletes have admitted that they were doping, the lab certified them all as clean.
One thing remains, doping is a topic that you will have a hard time finding people who speak truthfully (and openly) about it.
As u/erpel_ on reddit puts it:
I kinda just assumed that every country did a home dope test and if the athlete failed, s/he wouldn’t be sent internationally.