Why I turned my back on the Olympics

That’s a mindset born from decades of witnessing athlete after athlete revealed as just another scumbag; people who, even after being outed, stared into a camera lens and proclaimed their innocence to the world.

I wish Ratchanok the best in Rio but I won’t be watching. I adored the Olympics, athletics especially, for the visceral stirrings it unleashed but I now distrust because so many of those responses were predicated on lies – the clenched-teeth desire to win fuelled by deceit and a betrayal of the children they once were, who watched bug-eyed as their sporting heroes coruscated and dreamed of doing the same.

I doubt the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations would be perturbed by my despondency, but they should be. Because when someone like me – a person who loves sport so much that I became a sports journalist – switches off, you have a problem.

It happened with professional cycling too. Late night Tour de France viewing became no viewing at all. Dick Pound, former boss of the World Anti-Doping Agency, also stopped watching cycling because it reeks, and expressed a similar view about athletics, just not as severe, yet. He said: “If the public loses interest on the basis it’s all fixed, everyone’s doing it, you know, they’re going to stop watching. Sponsors will figure out their audiences aren’t available. Broadcasters will figure out the same thing – they’ll stop covering it.”

It’s impossible to tell how many people have been lost to the Olympics and athletics because of the hoodlum of world sport, Russia, and the IOC’s predictable enabling of the country’s rampant drug problem. By not barring Russia from Rio, the IOC has again highlighted itself as a soulless institution so divorced from the Olympics’ founding ideals it is the movement’s biggest danger, like a drunk father behind the wheel with the kids in the back.

The worst drug offender in world sport, by a long way, gets off relatively lightly and gets ready to host the 2018 Fifa World Cup after hosting the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, where it engaged in state-sanctioned, systematic doping – again. It’s one big club and you have to be reptilian to gain membership. Why support something like that?

They’re flogging a tainted product, treating us like fools. Honourable athletes make huge sacrifices for the chance to compete at the Disgraced Games. And after decades of cheating and lying, the medals have lost lustre.

Those glorious Kenyans and the romantic tales of them acquiring remarkable endurance running barefoot through mountains since childhood. A Kenyan looming on the shoulder of a race leader heading into the home straight, the stride long and languid, was one of the most captivating sights in sport. The nation’s widespread doping tarnished that.

The top four male golfers were right to turn their backs on the Olympics. We should do the same. Because not doing so is to be in an abusive relationship.