The shame of Britain’s sporting heroes

The comedian Richard Pryor famously advised any man caught committing adultery by his wife to deny everything and instead to ask: “now who you gonna believe – me or your lyin’ eyes?” This would be a good motto for British sport.

For years, sports fans in this country have been impelled to disregard the evidence our lyin’ eyes, for example, about why so many top level British endurance athletes seem to have debilitating asthma, or why the bikes used by Team Sky are heavier than those used by their rivals, or how it could be that plucky Britain with its smaller population finished higher in the medal table at the London 2012 Olympic Games than Russia, with its supposedly state-sponsored Putin-approved doping program (according to the McLaren report the London Games were “corrupted on an unprecedented scale” by those villainous Ruskies). 

On Monday, some five and a half years after London 2012, a tsunami of ordure finally crashed over British sport.