Will Paris 2024 be clean? I hate to say it, but probably not

But for all the magic of the Olympics Games, I’m unable to think about Paris 2024 without also pondering the overshadowing cloud.

That cloud is the doping cloud, and it’s particularly dark this summer.

It means I will watch all outstanding performances at this summer's Olympics and wonder about their legitimacy.

I know I’m not the only one who will watch Paris 2024 through this lens.

It’s a sad indictment of elite sport that so few are entirely trusting of outstanding performances. 

But it’s undoubtedly where we are and so, the question is not will Paris 2024 be clean because the answer, definitively, is no.

There is zero chance that this, or probably any Olympics in my lifetime, will be entirely clean.

Instead, the question is how dirty will Paris 2024 be?

In a few of the particularly high-profile Olympic sports, doping has been very much in the news in recent months.

Track and field is the Olympics’ blue riband event and somewhat depressingly, there has been positive tests left, right and centre recently.

The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) is in charge of keeping athletics clean, or as clean as possible, and if scores of positive tests are a good sign for the sport in that it indicates that cheats are being caught then athletics is in a great state.

Conversely, though, numerous positive tests surely suggests that doping is rife.

In reality, it’s likely that both these assertions are true; that people are being caught which goes some way to cleaning up the sport but it also probably means there’s plenty of doping on the go at the highest level.

Of course, the Russian doping scandal of the past decade, in which it was uncovered there was wide-spread, state-sponsored doping going on within Russia, did significant damage to the reputation of athletics. 

But the current most-pressing issue is about the Kenyans.

For fifty years, Kenya has been a major force when it comes to winning medals on the track. 

The past few years, however, have shown that Kenya is also a hotbed of doping.

Since 2015, over 300 Kenyan athletes have been sanctioned for doping offences.

And added to that, there’s been significant concern as to quite how thorough Kenyan anti-doping authorities are when it comes to catching their own athletes.

What that means is that when watching the greats of Kenyan distance running like Faith Kipyegon or Eilud Kipchoge, despite never having had anything close to concrete evidence of doping attached to them, they find their reputations sullied, as is the case with every Kenyan who will be in Paris this summer, due to the dreadful doping record of their countrymen and women.

Eliud Kipchoge is one of the greatest marathon runners to have ever lived but the cheating of his Kenyan compatriots has damaged the reputation of all athletes from Kenya

There’s plenty more suspicions elsewhere, too.

At the US Olympic Athletics Trials last month, the women’s 100m squad was confirmed as Sha'Carri Richardson, Twanisha Terry and Melissa Jefferson.

All three of these women are coached by Dennis Mitchell.

Sha'Carri Richardson from the USA is coached by convicted doper, Dennis Mitchell

As an athlete, Mitchell was banned for two years for high levels of testosterone and as a coach, he worked with convicted doper Justin Gatlin. Plus, there has been several more doping allegations made against him.

It’s not a great look for the US women’s team, is it?

It’s not only athletics which goes into Paris 2024 under a cloud.

The recent Chinese doping case within swimming is another huge problem.

Earlier this year, it emerged that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance in 2021.

The World Anti-Doping Agency accepted the explanation of team officials on face value when they explained the swimmers had accidentally eaten contaminated food, leading to their positive tests. The matter was immediately dropped and swept under the carpet, with no hint of sanctions. However, the story became public a few months ago and outrage, unsurprisingly, ensued. To make matters worse, 11 of these Chinese swimmers have been selected for Paris 2024.

There is very little trust either from the swimmers who will be competing against these Chinese competitors or the watching public that this doping case was properly investigated.

So, without knowing the definitive answer as to whether or not these athletes are dirty, how can anyone watch the action in the pool without at least a hint of scepticism?

And we can look closer to home for drugs scandals, too. Earlier this month, it was revealed that two-time taekwondo Olympic champion, Jade Jones, has been cleared to compete despite refusing to take an anti-doping test by claiming she was suffering from "cognitive impairment".

Jade Jones won gold in London and Rio

Much has been made by the Paris Organising Committee that they will be going above and beyond to ensure there is wide-spread and thorough anti-doping testing at this summer’s Olympic Games but the problem is that, these days, athletes very rarely test positive in-competition.

Any doper worth their salt knows that the benefit from doping comes in the lead-up to a major event, not on the day itself.

So, stringent testing for the fortnight-or-so of these Olympics will be almost futile.

It may not be years until we get a truly clear picture of how clean – or dirty – these Games are. 

London 2012 was hailed as the cleanest Olympics ever but hindsight, and a bucketful of positive tests, now shows us this couldn’t be further from the truth.

I hate that I’ll be watching gold medals being won in Paris and not be entirely trusting that it’s a legitimate victory.

I truly believe that most athletes in Paris will be clean, and they’d rather lose than dope.

But I also firmly believe there will be some cheats in the mix, and the likelihood is at least one of those cheats will become Olympic champion in the next few weeks.

And that’s the real tragedy of doping in sport - that one cheat throws a blanket of suspicion over so many of their fellow competitors.