The first thing I heard when I turned on the radio yesterday afternoon was that Marion Jones had been stripped of the 5 Olympic medals she won in 2000 after she admitted steriods during her training.

Now I know that almost no regular reader of this blog is likely to be sprinter – although I do coach a number of very talented track & field athletes in a Plymouth school – but it still brought back the memories of all the scandals of the last few years across many of the endurance sport disciplines.

And as a fan, I’m disappointed. But I also understand that for many of these athletes, it’s more a case of “keeping up so they can keep their jobs” and “making a living.” However I don’t believe we can condone what is, simply put, cheating.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution  any more than the powers that be seem to have one. In the end it will always be up to the individual athlete. Strange how for many, the strain of hiding what they had to do in order to win gets to be too much in the end!

As an age-group athlete however, I can do my bit to make sure the sport is clean by racing clean myself. And as a coach, I will never suggest a chemical solution to a problem that is almost always one that could be solved by working a little harder, recovering a little better or simply being willing to push a little more in races.

It’s my experience that athletes who train hard, eat properly and recover well often produce results that are way above their expectations. And all without any performance-enhancing substances, let alone illegal ones.

I know there will always be those athletes who are looking for the easy way to get a result. You have to ask however, based on the experiences of athletes who have confessed to doping of any kind, is it really the easy way?

It’s true that most of us will never win a world championship – there aren’t many world championships after all. And the pressures on elite athletes to perform are more than most of us can comprehend. But we can all work to get ever closer to our genetic ability. And here’s the good news: I’ve yet to meet the person who is so fast that they can’t go faster… just by training better.

Drugs…? I’ll stick to my coffee!