PUNISH CHEATING FOR LIFE TO END FARCE

SO let’s get this right. The coach of twice-banned Justin Gatlin has allegedly offered to supply performance-enhancing drugs to undercover reporters.

The coach, Dennis Mitchell (right), was himself banned when he was an athlete.

Are we supposed to be shocked or even mildly surprised? Are we supposed to meet the claims with anything other than a shrug? That world champion Gatlin – getting faster as he gets older, like we all do – even employed Mitchell in the first place is an insult to the ethics of sport.

But dopers do not do ethics.

Chris Froome is NOT a proven doper, but he is the subject of an “adverse analytical finding” – so adverse that he was found to have TWICE the permitted level of the asthma drug salbutamol in his system after his remarkable triumph in this year’s Vuelta a Espana. He maintains his innocence, might well prove it, but, arguably the greatest endurance sportsman this country has produced came seventh in the Sports Personality of the Year award. That tells us something. Is he clean or is he a drugs cheat? Large swathes of the sport-watching public probably do not care. Understandably so. We still watch the Olympics and the Tour de France, but take the achievements with way more than the permitted dosage of salt. The fight against doping has to go on, but its credibility needs far stronger punishments.

Start at lifetime bans and work down, if you have to.

At least, then, you might not have the grim farce of an athlete, who has served two drugs bans, having to fire a coach, who served one himself, for apparently saying he could get drugs.

You might say you could not make it up.

Sadly, you very easily could.