Can we trust Olympic athletes?

Last week at the Rio Olympics, Almaz Ayana of Ethiopia won the women’s 10,000 metres in a time that shaved a whopping 14 seconds from a world record that had stood for 23 years. It was extraordinary—yet that word in sport no longer means wonderful or excellent but is a euphemism for implausible or highly suspicious.

The disease that has infected the Rio Games is not Zika, as was widely feared, but cynicism. A climate of suspicion prevails when it comes to superlative performances, which creates an existential problem for elite sport and leaves fans in a quandary. The dilemma was summed up by sports writer David Walsh in the wake of Ayana’s run: “We can’t accuse because there’s no evidence and we can’t believe because there’s no trust.”

There is no evidence that Ayana is a doper. There is only her performance. After her race, she explained: “My doping is Jesus.” There was an echo of this in the response of Wayde van Niekerk after the South African broke the world 400 metres record in what the Guardian called “a blistering, barely believable 43.03sec.” Could his record be trusted? “I believe the talent God has blessed me,” said Van Niekerk.

Would people be any more reassured had Ayana or Van Niekerk pointed out that they are regularly drug-tested, that they are subject to additional screening as holders of the Athlete Biological Passport and that, through the “Whereabouts” programme, they constantly give their location so that they are available for testing?

Well, no. And this is the root of the problem. While we have always recognised that some athletes cheat, an erosion of trust in those in charge—from sporting governing bodies to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)—breeds a darker, more dangerous kind of cynicism.

Drugs in sport have been around since at least the 1950s. There was state-organised doping in East Germany and the Soviet Union from the early 1970s. But it was never just an Eastern bloc phenomenon. The paperwork from positive tests at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were stolen. Four years later in Seoul came the single biggest Olympic doping scandal, when Ben Johnson tested positive for an anabolic steroid after winning the men’s 100 metres.

Johnson had gone from Olympic bronze medallist in LA to breaking the world record at the 1987 world championships. Even more striking was his physical metamorphosis: from slender sprinter to somebody who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a bodybuilding demonstration. It really was extraordinary.

Johnon’s rival, Carl Lewis, had become openly suspicious. Yet Johnson’s positive test, announced two days after his victory, sent shockwaves around the world—for many, it remains the most dramatic moment in Olympic history. But the evidence was staring people in the face. But there was also, in those more innocent days, trust. It was trust, or good faith and skilful marketing, that allowed the Olympics to become such a powerful positive force that cities are willing to bankrupt themselves for the honour of staging them.

Four years ago, Olympic fever spread throughout London like a “benign virus,” as the then mayor, Boris Johnson, put it. There were doping stories but they didn’t spoil the mood. To have asked Mo Farah whether the public could believe in him at the end of Super Saturday—when he and fellow British athletes Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford all won gold medals—would have been a bit like going to a royal Garden Party and asking the Queen about her toilet habits.

A couple of weeks after the London Games came the downfall of Lance Armstrong: an event that may have been as a tipping point in the public’s willingness to trust sportspeople. Or rather, some sportspeople. Cynicism is not universal; it affects, or infects, the “faster, higher, stronger” sports: those that are objectively measurable, notably athletics, cycling and swimming, in which performances can be compared with those from the (tainted) past.

There are other phenomena at play: social media, the so-called “post-fact” world, in which stories are spread and accepted as true regardless of whether or not they are, the erosion of trust in politicians, public institutions and figures of authority. But in this summer of Brexit and Donald Trump a different, more disruptive, less accepting and more cynical mood is evident in the coverage of and conversations about the Rio Games. It was established at the start when the IOC balked at suspending Russia, despite evidence of state-sponsored doping. For many, it confirmed that the IOC is less committed to clean sport than to putting on the show, which depends on the participation, and money, of superpowers like Russia.

And yet, and yet. The irony is that it has almost certainly never been more difficult to cheat. One of the interesting things about the Armstrong case was the way he adapted his cheating as new tests were developed and loopholes closed between 1999 and 2005, when he dominated the Tour de France. WADA was set up in 1999 and has carried on developing new tests and closing loopholes in the years since.

Of course, some athletes will cheat, using ever more elaborate methods and techniques, just as some people will rob banks and some politicians will be corrupt. But the majority of the 11,000 athletes in Rio will be clean. Only a conspiracy theorist or a cynic would believe otherwise. And yes, among them will be Olympic gold medallists and world record holders.

The problem, as Walsh suggested, is not knowing. Football fans used to say that it was the hope that killed them. For fans of the Olympics, it is the uncertainty.

Richard Moore is the author of "The Dirtiest Race in History: Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and the 1988 Olympic 100m Final," and "The Bolt Supremacy: Inside Jamaica’s Sprint Factory"