Shameful litany of dope cheats always likely to be with us

God, I'm sick of dope: not in a Cheech and Chong take-a-break-from-the-bong way: more a sporting angst sense. Everything's dopey-this and dopey-that, all the time. It's like munching on a daily Disney nightmare: snow-white on the outside but with a grumpy, needley, pilly centre that requires you to scrunch your eyes and bite: after which it's just pot-luck.

When Bayern ran rings around Barcelona, and everyone pointed to how much fitter and stronger, and faster, the German team looked, tell me the thought didn't go through your head: Is there a Bavarian Dr Fuentes? A Dr Faustus maybe? Able to make already super-fit young men go even more Ubermensch?

Just in case there are any hungry German-speaking lawyers out there, of course there isn’t anything Faustian about massed ranks of Bavarians asserting their European superiority. And there’s no doubt the Bayern boys are motoring on nothing but sweat and strudel: just trying to make a point here.

You see, that's the thing with dope. If there's enough of it around, paranoia is always just a spark away. And there's never been a muggier, jumpier vibe swirling around sport than there is right now. Last week alone we had the loathsome Fuentes – reputedly juicer of choice to a plethora of sports stars – getting a suspended sentence from a hobbled Spanish inquiry which wound up rushing to bin blood-bags. All perfectly legal, of course: and summed up by Andy Murray with the simple tweet – "cover up".

Silver medal
Apart from that, British racing found more steroid-abuse to flagellate itself with. An obscure discuss-flinging 'ova' gave back an Olympic silver medal after failing another test. The Turkish Olympic 1500 metre champion faces a lifetime ban for doping – again. Another Turk who won gold at the Europeans in the 100 metre hurdles also looks like getting thrown out. In Brazil, Deco, of Barcelona and Chelsea fame, tested positive for a diuretic that is sometimes used as a masking agent.

Hell even Greg Norman described golf’s failure to introduce blood-tests as “disgraceful,” this on the back of Vijay Singh’s earlier positive test for, of all things, deer-antler spray. Golf: you’d think something so uptight might benefit from a little loosener now and again, and it would: but deer-antlers? That’s just weird.

And all that was just last week. So far in 2013 alone we’ve had all those Lance weeks, Real Sociedad week, Aussie steroid shame, busted Kenyan distance runners, a couple of more Tour De France cyclists, Boogerd and Rasmussen, easing their consciences and ’fessing up to prolonged doping – long after they finished pedalling: not to mention any number of pill-popping Americans whose names mean little on this side of the pond but which still contributes to an overwhelming atmosphere of despair at what might or might not be legit anymore.

That's the insidiousness of doping suspicion. After a while, you end not believing anything or anyone. Never forget Marion Jones's look-me-in-the-eye whopper – "Transparency is my ally". Yeah, Marion: transparency and Victor Conte.

In terms of dark-nights of the soul, pondering the extent of how many inadequates might be cheating their competition, the sporting public, and indeed themselves, ain’t exactly Kafkaesque. But too many people care too much for legitimate sport to dismiss this overwhelming spectre of doping as irrelevant. Trivial maybe: but not irrelevant. And because of that, this avalanche of bad-news stories is good. It really is.

This country knows better than most the damage caused by institutionalised looking-the-other-way. Whatever pain or discomfort is caused by facing up to reality is nothing compared to the cost of maintaining a delusion that everything’s hunky-dory.

But it makes it tough-going being a fan now. There’s a knowingness involved that doesn’t sit comfortably with the whole concept of investing so much emotion in something as ephemeral as one individual or team outperforming another.

Maybe not for the fanatics: those in thrall to teams usually don’t care what their heroes are ingesting just so long as they win and kiss the badge.

However for the majority, those with a sense of proportion, it's hard not to park our credulity close-by just in case a quick getaway from even more disillusionment is required. And if that continues then the whole point of sport is blown out of the water because the whole point is the grown-up preservation of the notion of fair-play; that merit gets rewarded on its own terms; that once you step onto the pitch, track, court or course, worldly nuance fades into the background.

The theory
That's the theory of course. Only the most childish believe it doesn't get corrupted to some extent but doping corrupts it totally. And that's shameful. It really is, because the world is hard enough anyway without recourse to innocence sometimes.

It would be nice here to inject a hopeful line, how the righteous will be rewarded when the revolution comes and the cheats are called to account. But there are always going to be dope-cheats because it will always be worth someone’s while to chance it. So there’s always going to be a shameful litany. The aim will be to make it not quite so long and depressing.

Feel better? Me neither.