doping
Will the Olympics ever be politics-free?
Despite Baron Coubertin’s ideals, nationalistic friction at the Paris Games in 1924 had already prompted a Times headline: ‘Olympics doomed’
Why Russia’s Olympic punishment backfired
The Tokyo Olympics are over and fifth place in the medals table went to the ‘ROC’, the Russian Olympic Committee.…
The straight dope
It’s not easy to get hold of Ángel Hernández, the legendary Mexican chemist who for a decade provided illicit performance-enhancing…
Survival of the sneakiest
Could there be a better metaphor for the corruption that now pervades all top-level sport than the use of motors…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, outlined four changes he sought in Britain’s membership of the EU. He wanted to…
Of course there’s no morality in top-level sport
Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had…
Life in the chain gang
In 2004, French police officers searching the home of the professional cyclist David Millar found some syringes and empty phials…
Seb Coe is a fine man… but his roasting over the Russian athletics scandal is justified
So Smiley was right all along: the bloody Russians were the baddest of the bad. The Pound report on the…
Our drugs cheat
Do you want to see Paula Radcliffe’s blood? If so, you’re not alone. Radcliffe, three-time winner of the London Marathon…
Dirty rotten scoundrels
In one of those old Mae West films a girl admires her friend’s jewellery: ‘Goodness, what lovely pearls,’ only to…
