KEY POINTS:
Enough is enough. The growing scandal surrounding Ian Thorpe's possibly suspicious drug test result is the last straw.
Some things you can put up with. For instance, it's no big deal when a Venezuelan boxer produces a sample which causes the test tube to go out partying for
three days and rob a liquor store on the way home.
We all know boxing is as dodgy as hell, but you can hardly blame a bloke for getting a little wired before having his brain mashed to a pulp before millions of viewers.
But Aussie swimming, and Thorpey? This is all too much. Next, they'll be telling us his feet were built by Dr Rey (surgery's plastic fantastic).
It is my duty here to declare that Aussie's favourite swimmer is innocent unless proven guilty, while in Australia he is innocent fullstop.
Around the rest of the world though, the poor boy is toast, and he knows it.
This is a story that has rocked us all. A lot of people in China will already be betting their bottom yuan that the entire Aussie swimming squad is crooked, yet hoping like heck that it doesn't reflect badly on the Beijing Olympics next year.
What a turn-up for the books. You can never tell what might be around the corner in the sports game.
Whatever happened to the good old days, when sports stars preferred to be impaired by alcohol? Where did sport ever get the idea that you can make things better with drugs? (Be careful, because this is a subject that can rattle around the cranium forever although if it's giving you a headache, here, take two of these three times a day).
Let's face it - sport is on the canvas. Smacked out boxers are the tip of the sports drug iceberg. And the sports drug iceberg is just the tip of the whole sports performance enhancing polar cap.
Sport needs to clean up its act, and get back to the days when it revelled in performance-reducing substances. In other words, It needs to do away with items like these:
Zappy bicycles
All cycling events should be conducted on three-speed Raleigh 20s with flared mudguards and banana seats. Wicker baskets should be mandatory for longer road races. Cycling lost its integrity the moment they made bicycles that don't sit right in a school bike stand. In the interests of re-cycling, competitive cyclists may continue to wear Martian helmets, but only if they turn them the other way around.
Body-hugging suits
Way too uplifting for many viewers, not to mention that they give competitors from technological superpowers an unfair edge. There are countries so poor they are still surviving on hand-me-down tracksuits where their athletes' only way of reducing wind drag is to cut the name tags off. Bring back shorts and singlets for athletics.
Media officers
Sports stars should be made to go through the pain of talking normally again. It will be tough at first, conceding that scoring fewer points than the other team means you have lost.
This move is going to have a devastating effect on the win-loss record for thousands of superstars. Some may even be forced to admit that they've never won anything.
But don't worry about the 3012 media officers who will be out of work.
A media officer spokesman told me that getting so close to keeping your job provided a wonderful opportunity to learn from the experience and would help in a comeback much stronger under a new employer.
Post match on-field interviews
The creme-de-la-creme of performance enhancing substances.
Blood, sweat and tears evoke immediate sympathy, even if the subject has just played like a one-legged drunk. It's so heart warming hearing players thank the fans for turning up, but what you really want to know is whether the fans feel like thanking the players or whether they think they might have turned it up.
Those blokes with microphones should bypass their exhausted heroes and aim their searching questions at the stands.
Stadium catering
Sports crowds lost their edge when they turned over half of the stadiums and all the best seats to the posh mob. Let's face it - it's really hard to boo when you've got half a spatchcock covering the mush.
Anyway, the movers and shakers in the flash seats think everything is wonderful after three chardonnays and a bit of rare rump.
By the end of the game, most can't remember whether they brought the car, let alone whether the game was any good or not. Packets of crisps and bottles of pop will sort them out.
Bulgarian weightlifters
You can't write anything about drugs in sport without mentioning Bulgarian weightlifters.
They are the lowest of the low, or the highest of the high depending on which way you want to look at it. There are lots of other weightlifters who take drugs, but it is more sinister when a Bulgarian weightlifter is involved. Competitors from countries you've never visited always seem the most suspicious and the important thing is that Bulgaria has a very dodgy secret service, which goes hand in hand with drugs in sport. It's written in stone - all Bulgarian weightlifters are cheats. They've got to go.
Locking in coaches
Not that I'm all that fussed on repeating an email whisper ... it's just that I wish I'd thought of this one first.
A rugby fan from deep in the heart of Chiefs country wrote to this desk on the subject of the bizarre decision to reappoint Ian Foster as Chiefs coach before the Super 14 season was even halfway through.
And I quote:
" ... rumour round the Waikato is that Ian's reappointment was an integral part of the deal for the ABs' reconditioning absence, perhaps the same goes for [Hurricanes coach] Colin Cooper. Also rumoured is that [Chiefs assistant] Warren Gatland has already had the approach from Canterbury. A cynic might think that the NZRU's new CEO Mr Tew (a true red and black man) may have his hand in all of this."
A terrific theory, and time will tell.
