Even before the news that Alan Shearer is to continue as a pundit on the BBC, this month has not been a good one for sport.
Positive drug test has followed positive drug test and there are signs that the general public is growing weary.
The cases of Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin, following the investigation into Barry Bonds and the banning of Tim Montgomery and Kelli White, have led a lot of people to ask, ”Are all these Americans on drugs?”
To answer that question in the affirmative would, of course, be a grave insult to all those United States citizens who have achieved success totally without chemical assistance, namely Lance Armstrong, Marge Simpson and Harry the Bigfoot from Harry and the Hendersons.
Yet you can hardly blame people for wondering when never a week goes by without some American or other producing urine so laced with testosterone that if you watered a pot plant with it within 24 hours it would have a tattoo and a bull terrier.
Many believe the recent spate of positives is just the tip of a hugely muscled iceberg and some diplomats have begun to call for the US to be stripped of its superpower status, claiming that it only got it by cheating.
Some even go so far as to suggest that it is not just the American population that is on steroids, but the land mass itself.
”If you look at old maps you will see that in the 16th century North America was no bigger than Spain,” says Ted Glen, professor of relative comparative studies at the University of Greendale.
”Yet within 200 years it was bigger than all of Europe put together. Are you telling me a nation can bulk up like that just through hard work and mom’s apple pie?”
Glen has circumstantial evidence to back up his case, citing US foreign policy as ”a classic case of the steroid abuser’s tendency to lash out violently and uncontrollably”, and believes the United Nations should impose an ”anabolic embargo” on North America.
”I bet you that within two years it would be the size of the Isle of Man and we could all give it the slapping it so richly deserves,” he says, while stressing his belief that Canada is ”very much the innocent victim of a passive boosting-type situation”.
US President George Bush has strongly denied that the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs is widespread among American citizens.
”The perjority of our folks are Kleenex,” he told television viewers in Texas this week. ”Asteroids such as testotoblerone and homealone III, and other substances such as EPO, HGH and R2D2 — mark my words there is no space for any of ’em in our home.
”The medicine cabinet is already so full of amphetamines you couldn’t wedge anything else in there even if you shoved real hard. Er, I’m sorry, I think my autocue may have been spiked by bitter rivals eager to discredit my achievements.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was also in denial, meeting with the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who confirmed that he regarded taking steroids as totally and utterly wrong.
”Unless, maybe, perhaps, you are a poor immigrant who wants to make it massive in the bodybuilding world and then go on to become a big-style movie actor before getting into high-level politics,” said the Terminator.
”Though even then you would regret it deeply when you were hugely successful and didn’t need to worry about money any more.”
Donald Rumsfeld has never tested positive for drugs. — Â