David Leggat: Sense of proportion lacking from those who police elite sports

Padraig Harrington and Alberto Contador. Two of the world's leading sports performers, both in the news for rule violations in the past few days.

But there the link should end, for their infractions are at opposite ends of the scale. Take the Irishman first.

A three-time major champion, Harrington is an ambassador for the Royal and Ancient golf club, which frames the rules of the game everywhere, outside the United States and Mexico.

This is irrelevant to how he came to be disqualified from the Abu Dhabi championship a few days ago but vaguely relevant in one respect.

Harrington was dobbed in by a television viewer, who claimed his ball had moved a fraction from its marker and therefore he signed an incorrect card.

He should have given himself a two-stroke penalty, but was unaware he'd done wrong. Officials instead took the word of the armchair observer.

This could start a whole new sport for the couch enthusiast. Call it SOS; Snitching on the Stars, and it could be done without so much as easing the backside off the seat, from thousands of kilometres away while chewing on a burger and sucking on a lager.

Take a cross-section of sports. What if a caller had phoned in to complain a certain forward pass in a certain rugby World Cup quarter-final four years ago had been missed by the referee. Do you take it back?

Or a viewer reckons he sees a bowler picking at the seam as he walks back to his bowling mark. On the blower pronto, my good man.

And best keep Sepp Blatter's mobile on speed dial for every time a ball crosses the line and is missed by the whistler.

Golf prides itself on its courtesies and strict adherence to the rules. But some of those rules are covered in cobwebs. Unfortunately the R&A tend to be resistant to rewriting the book.

Rubbing a player out of a tournament could cost him his playing rights on a tour. Is that in any way fair? Tweeted English player Ian Poulter: "The rules of golf are complete bollocks and are stuck back in 1932."

Officials should dock the player a couple of shots at the end of the round and move on. And don't answer any long-distance phone calls.

There's cheating, deliberate and premeditated; then there's Harrington and others like him who get sledgehammered out of all proportion to the offence.

Now Contador, the three-time Tour de France winner who has dragged cycling into the mud again, just when things had been relatively quiet on the doping front.

The Spaniard has tested positive for clenbuterol - which, since you asked, is a weight loss and muscle building anabolic drug, and more commonly used to fatten cattle.

He was provisionally suspended last August. Contador's story is that several of his Team Saxo teammates ate beef one night during the Tour de France. Of the group only he was tested the following day.

His defence? That clenbuterol can be unwittingly absorbed through meat, although it has been banned by European cattle producers since 1996.

The Spanish federation has proposed a one-year ban and loss of last year's Tour de France title. Talk about a hometown jury.

The usual ban is two years, and that would mean stiff financial penalties for Contador as well, including returning 70 per cent of his earnings of last year. But this is cycling, and few sports are as tainted by those at the sharp end.

Contador, the International Cycling Union or the World Anti-Doping Agency can appeal the eventual decision, doubtless with a range of perspectives on the penalty.

Contador's team boss at Saxo is former Danish rider Bjarne Riis. This will be the same Bjarne Riis who won the 1996 Tour de France and had admitted - as so many of them do in a kind of mea culpa well after the event, presumably to make them feel better about themselves - making "mistakes" from 1993-98, including taking the blood booster EPO and growth hormone drugs. Nice.