What A Shame

The sad fact of the commingling of sport and illegal drugs is that we never get to know what we are watching. We are all infected with a ineluctable skepticism that forces us to view such otherwise compelling sporting events as the Tour de France, and the Track & Field World Championships much as we would professional wrestling. We have all had too many occasions to hear too many allegations followed by too many athletes and too many coaches protesting too many times that they never did anything wrong to believe that they are all telling the truth. We don't need to add an asterisk next to record performance times or distances; it is already there, permanently printed in our minds. Athletic heroes have gone the way of the dodo: a thing of the past.