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Outlook Weekend: Fateful Attractions

Stories of people whose passion for someone or something led them into difficulties, including a love story that shook the Russian sporting world and a climb that went very wrong

Many Russian athletes have been banned from taking part in the 2016 Rio Olympics because of a doping scandal. This was partly the result of evidence provided by a married couple, Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov. Yuliya is a Russian athlete who in the past took performance enhancing drugs. She fell in love with Vitaly who at the time was working for the country's anti-doping agency and they ended up getting married. It was a partnership which would have huge repercussions for Russia's sporting world as together they decided to reveal the full extent of performance-enhancing drug-taking in Russian athletics.

Lauand Omar is a Syrian-Kurdish filmmaker with a lifelong love of horror films. Inspired by an ancient Kurdish legend, he wrote a film called 'Curse of Mesopotamia'. In the summer of 2014, he assembled a cast and crew in Erbil in northern Iraq. However just a few days into filming, the whole project changed when so-called Islamic State entered the country.

Julie Tullis was always fascinated by mountains. Thirty years ago she became the first British woman to reach the summit of K2 - the second highest mountain in the world and one of the most challenging for climbers. As Julie descended, she was caught in a storm and died. On the anniversary of their mother's death, her son Chris and daughter Lindsay have made an emotional journey back to K2 to find out why she was so attracted to climbing.

(L) Photo and credit: Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov.
(R) Photo: Climbing up K2. Credit: K2: Touching the Sky.

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27 minutes

Last on

Sun 14 Aug 2016 07:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Sun 14 Aug 2016 00:32GMT
  • Sun 14 Aug 2016 07:32GMT

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