David Leggat: Drug cheats' tall stories make the mind boggle

Think what you will of drug cheats but give them marks for being inventive.

A glance back at the variety of excuses they have used for getting caught would be amusing if they didn't stem from the nastier side of sporting competition.

Remember Dieter Baumann, the German 5000m champion at the Barcelona Olympics of 1992, claiming his toothpaste had been spiked when he was nabbed for nandrolone in 1999. There are a multitude of other cases which have produced equally bizarre tales of cruel misfortune.

At the Athens Olympics this year, the usual clutch were thrown out, including a couple of Hungarians - a hammer thrower and discus thrower who were stripped of their gold medals when found to have used a method of avoiding detection which involved penises, rectum plugs and tubes.

You don't want to know the specifics, but suffice to say what they did is enough to make male eyes water. Yet it shows the lengths athletes are prepared to go to in search of glory.

Now one of New Zealand's brightest sporting talents, cyclist Jeremy Yates, has copped a two-year ban after testing positive for abnormal levels of testosterone in a race in Belgium this year.

It is depressing news but not totally surprising. After all, cycling worldwide is loaded with cheats.

It is tempting to wonder how much pressure was put on Yates by his managers, hangers-on and the vermin who supply the drugs to riders. But ultimately the athlete is responsible for what is swilling round in his system.

A former world junior road champion who had joined the top French professional team Credit Agricole, Yates had it all in front of him. True, there had been an 18-month ban for "persistent and immature behaviour" imposed by Cycling New Zealand - now Bike NZ - but that could be put down to the precocity of youth.

Yates has offered no excuse, he refused to put up a second sample for testing by the Belgian authorities and his father, Bryan Yates, won't discuss whether an appeal is planned. He reckons the whole business is not newsworthy. Wrong, sir.

When you attend an Olympics, you look down the list of sports likely to be of interest to the drug police. Next to weightlifting and track and field comes cycling. It's been a bad year for the wheelies.

There was the Australian row over their track squad for Athens, the cocaine-fuelled death of the charismatic Marco Pantani, and another New Zealand Games rider, Anthony Peden, has his hearing over the odd circumstances surrounding his late withdrawal from the keirin in Athens due to be heard next week.

He admitted taking a banned cortisone-type drug a few days before his event, after a medical misunderstanding with a German doctor, and was withdrawn.

Is a two-year ban long enough for dirty athletes? Of course not, but it seems the sporting police have been worn down by the legal manoeuvrings of athletes which have become more labyrinthine over the years. Their will to battle on may be weakening.

And now a young New Zealander will forever have that five-letter C word alongside his name.

A note for the gloom and doom merchants predicting a bad night out in Paris for the All Blacks tomorrow.

Their record in the French capital going back to 1905-06 is: played 10, won seven, lost two, drew one. Their problems in France have largely come when they've tackled Les Bleus in the south of that country.

That said, the French have had a rocky buildup, players coming and going, injuries taking their toll, questions over their stability behind the scrum and at fullback, and coming off a beating from Argentina in Marseille. Many pointers suggest an All Blacks win - which, given the French way of doing things, will probably produce the exact opposite.