Has clean athlete Reece Prescod tarnished the image of the drug cheat games?
In Ancient Egypt, athletes gained a competitive edge by drinking boiled ass hooves with rose petals. It worked - one runner was seen sprinting faster than ever… straight to the toilets.
These days, sportsmen and women (or sporters, as I prefer to call them: think batsmen and women now being referred to as batters) are heavily monitored to ensure they are not imbibing unfair performance enhancers. You know… drugs.
The reasons for this crackdown on drug cheats are obvious. It’s not fair, it’s not natural, and it’s not good for the individual concerned. Stuff your body with growth hormones and steroids concocted in unlicensed laboratories by mysterious men who laugh in the face of regulations and tweak the nose of rulemakers, and things will not go well.
Sure, pumping your body full of dubious chemistry might make you faster, but it also shrinks your kidneys to the size of raisins and turns your bladder into a sieve. Not ideal.
Drug rules make sense. Which is why the Enhanced Games, a sporting event where the taking of banned substances to improve performance is positively encouraged, is causing understandable controversy.
While right-thinking members of society are appalled at the idea, the event - set to take place in Las Vegas, USA (quelle surprise), in May - is currently attracting athletes from around the world whose moral compass has a syringe as its needle.
Unfortunately, much like the parade of failed politicians joining the Reform party, the Enhanced Games draws individuals on the downward slope looking for one last pay day or a moment in the spotlight.
One of the latest to join the party is GB sprinter Reece Prescod, who has come out of retirement to take part. And in a move which is likely to bring the event into further controversy, he says he won’t be taking drugs. Shock. Horror. What if he wins?
In a Games where a positive drugs test is applauded to the rafters, what if he really is found to be clean? Surely that makes him a cheat! The organisers will be forced to ban him from any further drug-fuelled cheat festivals. It’s only fair.
Anyway, Reece still has time to play by the Enhanced Games’ rules and consume his bodyweight in testosterone gummies and hormone cocktails to keep his paymasters happy at the expense of his bladder and other vital organs. Hey, he can always wash them down with a sprinkle of ass hoof to sweeten the deal.
But if a drug-free Prescod does take part and wins, he may stand accused of bringing the competition into repute.
Fat chance! No honest, hard working athletes, hero-worshipped by youngsters around the globe, will go near this event.
The organisers wouldn’t let them in anyhow. They don’t want them to sully the Enhanced Games motto. You know: ‘Faster, Higher, Catheter.’