> This is getting bad, so I guess there are no real winners anymore?

I read about this and this is all fallout from a company called BALCO
which took advantage of many athletes, both Olympic and professional and
practically junked them up.

There are some great athletes. What I don't like is now the aura of
suspicion on every athlete that the media places on them after an
incredible feat, whether it is a win or a record breaker. Back in the
days of the Cold War and when I was a kid, even in the 1970s and 1980s,
you heard about the blood doping and all of the other stuff that
eventually was "discovered" in the 1990s. The surprise was that East
Germany was more of a villian compared to the Soviet Union. It really
isn't anything new. Yes, some medals have been stripped and titles have
been returned.

What young athletes should do is to compete and go at it fair and square.
But there's always this push for new records and that is not the essence
or the incentive of competition that needs to exist. It should be on any
given day, the best time on that day against that field. Athletes
definitely need to be clean. But it is all of this scrutiny that the
"jury of the media" and the "court of public opinion" place on the athlete
that is the real tarnish to track and field and other sports.

Louis