Billed as The First Honest Olympics Ever, the games of 2004 opened beneath the new Olympian banner, consisting of crossed hypodermics rampant above coiled urethras recumbent and the figure of obsolete athleticism couchant beneath the triumphant twin-orb symbol of artificial testosterone. Tears were shed from many a steroid-enhanced tear-duct when the new anthem was played, and some competitors even ceased to pat their arms in the search for tracks (man), as the strains of Purple Haze rang out over the stadium.
Then the competitors - or at least those of them who could stand - paraded past the viewing platform in the traditional national costumes of the lands they represented - namely, the liquors which in the bad old days were used as urinary masking agents. The Russians came as vodka bottles, the French as cognac, the Americans as bourbon, the Jamaicans as rum, and the Canadians, with the rehabilitated Ben Johnson at their head, as a bottle of Canadian rye, to remind us of the dark and primitive days of athletics.
Women's pole vault
The games opened with the women's pole vault, with the first vault by a pygmy who up until a month before had thought the event was something to do with jumping over the Pope; yet she exceeded the former men's record by 15 feet. Her fine performance was then eclipsed by a small Aborginal lady whose vault was in turn considerably exceeded by that of a female Innuit (who incidentally, was the only athlete present who did not think snow was something you inhaled). She, alas, had to retire hurt after her ovaries got entangled on the crossbar.
In the end, the gold went to the US, whose winner had competed in the 1996 Olympics as a teenage gymnast. Now two feet taller and 15 stones heavier, she cleared the Olympic grandstand, and on returning from orbit accepted a multi-million dollar offer from Nikedas to model its dazzling new range of women's jockstraps, and another from Gillette for its razors for the girl who has to shave hourly.
It says something about the integrity of The Honest Olympics that it has a competition for the backroom boys and girls of the profession, in which straightforward performance-enhancing drugs meet head to head with the body-building drugs such as steroids and good old testosterone. This is the blue riband event of The Honest Olympics. The performance-enhancers got off to a great start when their athlete, an old lady who had not walked for 20 years and had been incontinent for ten, did the 400-metre high hurdles in 30 seconds, and then the 500 metres to the laundry in under 20.
Steroid team
But then the steroid team got to work. They had as their representative a small stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress, which, after it had been released by the FBI, had been put on steroids. Within hours, it was able to walk away from the dress, leaving not an incriminating forensic clue behind. Within three months it was able to push a Greyhound bus uphill; after a year, it was able to run the 100 metres in five seconds, which was still not as fast as Bill Clinton was able to move, but was fast enough to get gold.
All eyes were then on the pool, where a blacksmith's sheanvil was representing Ireland. Of course, in the bad old days of the bogus Olympics, when performance was dependent purely on athletic skill, the sheanvil would have had no chance. But in The Honest Olympics, of course, all things were possible - though there was a moment's scare when she tested negative on steroids, which is in violation of the both the spirit and the law of The Honest Olympics. Drugs-testing, after all, is to ensure a level playing-field.
But after a urine test she delivered standing up, it was found that there had been a laboratory error: she had in fact taken all the drugs specified for the event, including a cute little one from China which can double a swimmer's speed (though it does have the trifling side effect of transforming part of the female anatomy into something rather like a large oxtongue, and in middle age causes athletes to sprout antlers from their armpits, ending in certain and agonising death).
Real scandal
So all was well. But alas, the Irish swimmer took the silver behind an elderly Poor Clare from Italy who was swimming for the first time in her life, and in her habits too. However, the sporting Irish were nonetheless delighted, for they could truly say that they had an aquatic athlete second to nun.
But it was in the men's 5,000 metres that the real scandal erupted, showing that all is still not well in sport. It was not won, as expected, by Mervyn, who as Monica had won the Miss America Pageant for People with Special Abilities in 1998, and who after extensive narco-reconstruction had become a record-breaking male athlete, but by Kevin Keino from Kenya. He was drugs-tested after the race and found positive: positively no drugs at all. The most sordid detail of all emerged only after he had been sent home in disgrace - he had even trained without drugs. Proof, if proof were needed, that there's a long way to go before the Olympics lives up to its true ideals.