David Leggat: Drug deceit inspires yearning for simpler days

Maybe it's an age thing.

Having a 13-year-old sniggering over your shoulder as you grapple with the intricacies of text messaging can make you yearn for simpler times.

Fred Trueman died last month. A chap I know approached the great English fast bowler when he was in his pomp at the end of a day asking for an autograph.

"X*&%!! off son," Trueman huffed. As it happened, he probably just got the tough old bugger at the wrong moment. But there's a lesson: Don't go in search of your idols; you might not like what you see. Better by far to admire them from afar.

But you never had to wonder whether Trueman was using some concoction with an unpronounceable name to achieve his success.

It was done on buckets of sweat, honest labour, and at the end of the day a puff on his pipe and a few pints of wallop to wash down the sausages and mash.

So how do today's impressionables view sport's biggest names?

What would they make of American Floyd Landis, champion rider of cycling's toughest event?

Or Justin Gatlin, his smiling compatriot who is the world and Olympic sprint champion?

In the case of Landis, this is the most significant weekend in his life.

Tonight, having tested positive for having too much testosterone sluicing around his body during the Tour de France, he gets the result of the B sample.

If it's positive it's likely to be a two-year holiday and the loss of the most sought-after road title in the sport.

As for Gatlin, he had become something of a poster boy for the anti-drugsters despite copping a one-year ban during his college years for something dodgy in a treatment for Attention Deficit Disorder.

Gatlin smiled nicely and he's quick.

His sample showed too much testosterone at a relay event in Kansas in April. A red card on his impending B sample could mean a life ban.

Let's throw in Shane Warne for good measure, as he's topical at the moment with an unauthorised biography of his (mainly) off-field exploits in a bookshop near you.

He got a one-year ban from cricket for taking banned diuretics to help him to lose weight.

What do young sports fans think of them? Do you imagine their illusions are shattered when, sorry if, Landis and Gatlin are given the boot?

Did they think any the less of Warne at the time of his ban and will they dump him if they read of his bedroom antics? Young men might figuratively give him a pat on the back.

Maybe they use the most popular word in the teenage vocabulary - whatever.

Yesterday, German swimmers smashed the 4 x 200m freestyle relay world mark by almost three seconds.

One of their number, Britta Steffen, has also whipped the world 100m record and was part of the 4 x 100m freestyle relay quartet who swam the event quicker than anyone else has, with Steffen cutting out the fastest relay split ever.

Steffen swam poorly at the Athens Olympics three years ago then disappeared for a year. She'd never been in the world top 10 until the German trials this year.

She's back 10kg lighter and producing times unlike any she'd previously come near. Does this sound familiar?

You'd like to think it's all natural. It might be. But you can't.

And that's the sad part of sport these days. A big dollop of innocence has gone for good.

You watch top-class sport these days and gnawing away at the back of the mind is that little question: is this on the level? And often, deep down, you just know the answer.

Several years ago, on the morning of a international track meet in Britain, the promoter was in his office attending to last-minute details. The manager of one of the world's leading athletes walked in with his star and put down a small phial of liquid.

"This is our urine sample for tonight, or we're pulling out," he said.

The athlete competed and the sample - and you're not going to believe this - tested negative.

Cynical? You bet. So let's instead wonder at the simple things in life. Like text messaging.