CJH's line grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre

All right, suckers. Ears up. Minds open. Message from Mrs Jones . . . track stars need more love. The more the better. Can you dig it?

So says Marion Jones in one of her many advertisements for Nike, which have been airing on American TV all summer, aimed at persuading a gullible population that track stars are just good clean-living folk.

Americans love their sport and right now there is little appetite among them for facing into the murk. Track stars have never appealed much to them. NBC's ratings for the Games are low. All those little packages of mush which the network uses instead of live coverage must be hard to digest against a background of constant shellfire aimed at American sports authorities. There's just something about athletics, isn't there?

Whose fault is all the upset and disenchantment? Journalists' fault no doubt. Will it be good for us all in the long run? Here's hoping.

The hostility of some US Olympic people in the past few days as journalists sought information on the CJ Hunter business has been extraordinary, best explained, naturally, by press officer Michael Moran who told us that he didn't want anything to disturb Marion Jones' "emotional support". Jones will notice surely that her medals don't glint as brightly with the nandrolone shadow her emotional support has hung over them. That isn't to infer that she is a drug cheat, it's just to acknowledge that she seems to be mighty close to one. Her emotional support looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck. He probably is a drug cheat.

That's not easy to digest. Marion never told us any of this when she was extolling the virtues of track love for Nike. Any wonder Americans are hostile to the notion. At her press conference last night when a journalist at last stood up and asked her about the issue of drugs another journalist (an American) hissed "asshole!"

But Marion Jones deserves no kid glove treatment. Firstly she is no confused weepy kid just mindlessly standing by her man, she is an extraordinarily-focused young woman who has made specific and calculated decisions about these Games.

It is of no emotional concern to the media whether she feels fine for her drive for five. The job of hacks is not to buoy the stars but to cover them. There is no room for concern that Nike's star turn might get the wobbles or that the future of American track and field may disappear with her long jump hopes.

She lives with a heavy who has intimidated the media with his words and his presence for the past few years. Her choice. She came into a press conference with the same character to help him defend himself against allegations. Her choice. She announced two years ago with perfect hubris that she was going for five medals. Her choice again. Pressure. So what fine entertainment these Olympics have transpired to be. The IOC taking on the Americans is no small attraction. NBC television should have been offered a separate rights deal on this one.

The IOC is biting the hand that feeds it - an attack which is deeply contrary to the nature of the beast. The Olympic Museum is in Lausanne but America has virtual ownership of the Games. NBC provides a huge wedge of the dough, the US provides 18 per cent of medallists, most of the sponsors and every now and then a steamy city in which to hold the party.

So it's no mere trifle then when the IOC utters hard words about hard things to these people and tells them to get their house in order before they snoop around anyone else's place. For too long America has taken a pass on the drugs issue. It's been somebody else's moral problem. America has blown the whistle many times while steroid-bloated gridiron goons trundled across the backdrop, while andro-pumped Mark McGwire swatted away in St Louis, while Dennis Mitchell walked out of a hearing shaking his head in wonderment that the American authorities had bought his novel beer and sex defence. Only in America.

We have heard Americans talk a good game while tests are suppressed, while questions are stifled, while fingers are pointed. There has been a feeling that Americans are different. Licensed. Immune. Take CJ Hunter. With a (record-breaking, surely?) four positives in four different labs this summer he has been quite the nandrolone roadshow. A thousand times the limit in one test. The alternatives are this. He felt he was immune from prosecution. He was too dumb to know. Those conspiracy pixies who nobbled Michelle de Bruin have been weaving their magic again. There's a dietary supplement out there which is mislabelled.

Only a fool or a defence lawyer would pick any of the last three alternatives and so far even all the lawyers and all the king's counsel picked to put Linford Christie and Mark Richardson back together again haven't been able to produce this mysterious mislabelled substance. Of course CJ already has a top defence lawyer, Johnny Cochrane, and it may yet transpire that getting accused of being a drug cheat in the middle of the Olympic Games might produce the biggest pay-day which CJ or his wife have ever had. If the catheter don't fit, you gotta acquit?

That's how you know the stakes are high. CJ is a big, big name and Marion Jones was pre-selected as an icon of these Games. To be going after CJ with a big gun is to risk being gored badly by a lawyer in the grass. The IOC have shown they mean business by tossing the Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan onto the fire. Four years ago Maria McMahon of Ireland got a little tut-tutting and a let-off for almost the exact same offence. The Americans are pleading that a fair chunk of the cases they have been sitting on back home are just cold remedies gone wrong like Raducan. The IOC have gone back and looked at the rule and hey presto it says that the athlete is responsible for what's in the sample. Ignorance of the law is no defence. Conspiracy pixies need not apply.

So the struggle continues. The point is that America, which should be the world leader in sport, has surrendered all moral standing on this issue. They stand down there with East Germany, China and the people who brought you Michelle Smith.