It’s not the best start to Olympic year with two-time London Marathon champion Wilson Kipsang provisionally banned for anti-doping breeches.
Which beggars the question now: can we have faith any more in the Games?
Or will every gold medal come with the suspicion that it has been artificially enhanced?
Now it wasn’t squeaky clean when I were a lad and running around the tracks, fields and roads of the UK.
But it wasn’t Tour de France proportions.
Mind you a trawl back to the Greek Games suggests they were at it too.
According to 1st Century BC physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia animal hearts and testicles were the anabolic steroids of the day.
Now I enjoyed my meat and two veg well enough when I visited Athens https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/2019/09/21/acropolis-later/ last September… https://athensattica.com.
But to the best of my knowledge…
Although I did sprint up those hills of the Attica island of Kythera https://visitkythera.com and swim like a fish in the Aegean Sea.
While I leapt with joy higher than any high jumper when I finally got to see the Parthenon.
And ne’er a fungus, bread with opium, or Galen’s recommendation, the boiled hooves of an Abyssynian ass, in my system.
We’d passed by the stadium which had been used for the 1896 Games, the first of the modern era.
And all along the way there were signposts to Marathon.
Phillipedes, as we all know, covered the 26 miles and 385 yards, back in 490BC.
To convey the news that the Athenians had beaten the Persians.
Now, of course we’ve got TV, the net and social media.
But will they last as long as Pericles’ great legacy.
And here’s a leaving thought: when will the Games return to its spiritual home?
With Tokyo this year, Paris in 2024 and LA in 2028 then 2032 is the earliest Greece could host it.
And Seoul is likely to get that.
And Seoul athletics fans will recall was where seven out of the eight finalists in the100m…
At various points in their career to violate the rules over drugs.
And a PS here… I know I called it wrong when I said it was New England Patriots’ year again This Sporting Weekend – Touchdown Vegas in American Football.
What else am I getting wrong… let me know!
MEET YOU ON THE ROADS