First, let's clear up the question of the nude statues - or rather, the absence of them - within the Olympic display currently installed in the centre of Doha.

This display - entitled "Olympics - Past and Present" – has pride of place within the Alriwaq Exhibition Hall close to the Museum of Islamic Art, and will run until June 30 as a forerunner to a larger and more permanent exhibition to be housed within the Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum.

But cultural differences have caused some awkwardness around the showing of three ancient Greek statues of athletes competing in the ancient Games. That is, competing without any clothes on, a state of play likely to risk offending public taste here in Qatar.

Today I had the opportunity to clarify the sequence of events during a press tour of the display accompanying four of the athletes who will compete in Friday's meeting at the Khalifa International Stadium in the opening International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Diamond League event of the season.


After the quartet of Christian Taylor, Allyson Felix, Brittney Reese and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce - all Olympic champions, aptly enough - had been shown the exhibits, the party emerged from the recreated environs of Olympia to the cafeteria. And there was Dr Christian Wacker, the German director of the Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum.

He told insidethegames that there had been much speculation about the issue of the statues, adding: "We had a fabric which we wanted to put two metres in front of the statues. This was a very good compromise. But the Greek Culture Ministry didn't accept it and so we had no alternative. We do not want to cause offence - you have to acknowledge local cultural sensitivities.

"Many other objects have been lent and will be sent back to the Greeks, or to the International Olympic Committee (IOC)."

The exhibition, which opened in March, is designed to take viewers through 2,700 years of Olympic history with two sections highlighting ancient Olympia and the modern Games. It displays some 1,200 objects, including over 600 items from Greece and international museums.


All four athletes appeared to be genuinely engaged by what they were seeing, which was greatly to their credit given the constant attention of photographers and the dazzling light of accompanying television cameras, not to mention - let's be honest here - he constant genteel scuffling for position employed by the likes of me and fellow scribes, many of whom were also wielding mobile phone cameras.

It's not a giant display, but it is a genuinely fascinating one, encompassing many of the items and images one might expect, ranging from votive armour unearthed from Olympia to the increasingly garish range of Olympic mascots, a furry menagerie housed in a giant glass display.

As our guide laconically pointed out, the little furry animals appeared to have become bigger and more numerous as the years went by, with Beijing 2008 providing five little characters - that is, potentially five times more revenue.

Laconically, while we are on the subject, is a word deriving from the Greek region of Lakon, of which Sparta was the capital. The Spartans - known for the brilliance of their fighting as well as the brevity of their speech - provided ancient Greece with some of its finest Olympic champions, and there were artefacts and armour belonging to that special breed among the items on display.

This was an area of the exhibition that especially appealed to Taylor. "I feel the connection with all this," he said. "It is special to me. It's also motivating. I'm a big fan of the history of my sport."

Also included in the exhibits was a model of how Olympia was laid out, showing the route taken by competing athletes to the stadium which took them past displays paid for by way of punishment for those who had cheated or transgressed Olympic rules.

Apart from the immediate cost, the real punishment lay in the knowledge that such transgressions - usually cases of bribery in days before the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had begun laying down the law - would be recorded and commemorated down the generations as a warning to those who followed. It makes a four-year ban look puny in comparison.

This exhibition also embraces, if that is the word, the darker side of sport, offering what is almost a poignant display of doping during the modern era, but during a time when many practices were not outside any rules.

Thus one showcase contains a battered metal suitcase containing the racing gear of an Austrian Tour de France cyclist in the mid-1960s, Alfred Kain, which includes a baking powder tin (Dr Oetker, a particularly fine brand) containing his keep-you-going kit of strychnine (Stricnina Nitrato), Testoviron, mini Bunsen-burner and, of course, syringe.


The tour concludes with a section devoted to Qatar's Olympians, including a framed memento of pictures, tickets and pin badges assembled and donated by swimmer Nada Mohammed, one of their female competitors at London 2012.

This section will be expanded considerably when the main exhibition opens in two years' time - perfectly mirroring Qatar's lingering and expanding ambition to host the Games themselves.

Today, however, the focus was on those who have already achieved their Olympic ambitions. Felix has been really taken with the display of Olympic medals from 1896 onwards.

"I love seeing all the medals from the different Games," she told insidethegames. "I think it's really neat. I've been looking at the medals I have won since Athens, and they are getting bigger and bigger."

The London 2012 gold medal - she collected three for the 200 metres and both relays - does indeed look like the size of a small plate. Felix is starting now on the four-year journey to Rio 2016. She needs to prepare thoroughly. Those medals will take some strength to bear...

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.