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In athletics there's always been a willingness to cheat if it looks like you're not cheating. I think that's just a quirk of human nature.

I myself am frustrated in just where sports are at. It's a hard thing when you're out there working every day, and you know that someone else is cheating and they may not necessarily get caught.

If the Age of Sport has been all champagne and roses hitherto, then expect our love affair with its newly-acquired prominence to become increasingly tainted by scandals about cheating. Sport is losing its shine and allure.

Considering the relatively brief careers of professional athletes, teenagers who are good enough to play at the highest level should be able to exploit that market.

I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life.

There will always be cheaters. It is human nature. It will never be 100 percent clean, in any sport.

Everybody recognises that giving young people competitive outlet through sport is a very good thing.

Among sportsmen are the noble, the diligent and the caring, as there are the callous, the cheats and the criminals.

The true value of sport is more than the skills that young people learn.

Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up.