David Leggat: Dodgy but it's terrific to watch

It should have been as obvious as a dodgy hairpiece that the first sport to have a drug shadow cast over it at the Games would be weightlifting.

The two go hand in hand like salt and pepper, Jagger and Richards, wind and Wellington.

Syringes, tablets and phials were confiscated from rooms used by the hosts' weightlifting squad at their Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.

The latest probe into alleged drug trafficker Belinda van Tienen is coming to its conclusion - the same van Tienen who is due to contest the 69kg event for Australia on Monday. Two other weightlifters received two-year bans as a result of positive tests when van Tienen was involved.

It just goes on and on.

In yesterday's Melbourne Age newspaper, columnist Richard Hinds wrote that "since eastern European men with thighs the size of giant Christmas hams started putting Kelvinators at either end of the bar and lifting them with a barely suppressed yawn, the sport has had the credibility of a $6 note".

It's hard to argue with that.

The weightlifting programme here began with the women's 48kg event. Weightlifting, for all its grubby connotations and wretched history, is compelling viewing. It is terrific theatre and the audience are drawn into the show.

Weightlifters are entertainers. At the Athens Olympics two years ago, a big bear of a man from eastern Europe marched on to the stage and stared angrily at the weight before him as he strode back and forth.

Then he suddenly began shouting at it in an unintelligible tongue.

I presumed he was shouting: "I'm going to lift you above my head and drop you on the floor". As it happened the weight won, the bear failing to get the bar anywhere near aloft.

In the women's competition here, it boiled down to a clash of styles and appearances. At the risk of being accused of being a perpetuator of stereotypes, there was a Canadian - a lithe, athletic, blond, ponytailed teenager from Montreal and - and I'm sorry, I can think of no other way to describe her - a squat, muscly Indian policewoman.

Marilou Dozois-Prevost probably regards herself as being on her second life. She was in a plane which overran the runway in Toronto last year. She got away with an injured knee - more than could be said of the plane.

On the other side of the floor, so to speak, was Commonwealth champion and recordholder Kunjarani Nameirakpam. She is 38, 1.48m and, oh yes, she's twice been suspended for returning positive drug tests.

Apart from a pocket of Indian support, there was a clear favourite.

The Canadian, who knows how to emote expertly for the cameras, won the snatch, leaping about with a Colgate smile. But the grim-faced policewoman grabbed the gold with the final lift of the event to eclipse her own Games record.

This was the event Australians had earmarked for their first gold medal, through the work of an 18-year-old Darwin bartender - yes, you read that correctly - Erika Yamasaki.

She got the bronze, but won the crowd over. And fair enough too, as it hasn't exactly been a stellar start for the Australians in the medal count.

They had to choke down on Thursday night's opening finals session in the pool when the gold count read: Scotland 2, South Africa 1, New Zealand 1, Australia 1.