Usain Bolt wins gold ahead of drug-cheat Justin Gatlin
Can a cyclist win the Tour de France without doping?
Regrettably, the question's rhetorical.
Truth is if you're racing clean, even in the wider peloton - you're the odd one out in the tour's chemical brotherhood.
The cynicism surfaced again yesterday after watching Usain Bolt triumph in the World Athletics Championships 100 metres.
What made it farcical was not his win, but that three one-time dopers and twice-banned drugs cheat Justin Gatlin, were in the dash.
The take-home message for young gifted athletes is that cheating (even getting caught) remains a viable option.
Pundits billed it as the "good vs evil" final. I remember Carl Lewis was portrayed in a similar glowing hue after Ben Johnson was stripped of gold at the same event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. What we didn't know at the time was Lewis had failed three tests before arriving at that Olympics.
This week we saw further evidence of widespread doping in the highest levels of track and field from files of world athletics governing body, the IAAF.
By way of contrast, witness the freakish leap of American Bob Beamon in the long jump at the Mexico Olympics in 1968. So freakish was his jump, it broke the world record by nearly two feet. It remained the world record for 22 years, 316 days.
A like feat in the current athletics climate would furrow the brows. Investing trust in a modern-day sporting aberration or Beamon-esque feat of athleticism, like Bolt's, is near impossible.
That's what hurts the most. Sports cheats have robbed us of belief. Today, a yellow jersey is met only with derision, a new "world record", with suspicion.
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