The presence of a double cheat and the fact that he is favourite to win one, or two, gold medals in the IAAF’s most prestigious event with Usain Bolt struggling for form surely typifies all that is wrong with a sport yet again critically wounded by another nauseous drugs scandal.

Revelations first in Germany and now in London's Sunday Times that a third of the medals awarded in world and Olympic long-distance events between 2001 and 2012 were won by athletes who registered "suspicious" blood tests doubtless will cause the global millions watching the Championships on TV to sniff: "Well, they’re all on drugs, aren't they?"

Some certainly are. The results of 12,000 blood tests on 5,000 athletes, revealed by a whistle-blower connected to the IAAF, showed that those on 800 athletes were 'highly suggestive of doping or at the very least abnormal'.

Among them were several Britons, one a household name (not Mo Farah or Jessica Ennis-Hill) who has threatened to sue if that name is revealed. If it was, the world would be gob-smacked.

The leaked statistics show that the athlete in question had red blood cell counts so high that experts say there is only one in a thousand chance of it occurring normally. 

Much blame for the present situation must be laid squarely at the portals of the IAAF, who have consistently failed to take the ruthless action required to eradicate the poison from their sport.

One might suspect that the thickness of the carpet in the organisation’s Monaco headquarters has less to do with the quality of the pile than what has been swept under it.

This goes back to the days of one of its former Presidents, the Machiavellian Dr Primo Nebiolo, who was widely believed to have ordered a positive sample taken from a star athlete to be poured away rather than create a scandal that would blemish the inaugural World Championships in Rome in 1987.

Since then, the IAAF, regrettably in common with most other international sports bodies, have paid little more than lip service to the scourge of doping.

Perhaps the incoming President, either Britain’s Sebastian Coe or Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka, will find an antidote. We live in hope. 

The response so far from the authorities has hardly been pro-active. The initial reaction from the IAAF apparently was to attempt to place an injunction on the publication of the report and threaten legal action against both the whistleblower who leaked the confidential data and the German TV programme makers. They now say they "strongly reject the allegations, labelling them sensationalist and confusing" and a consequence of "misinformed" journalism.

The International Olympic Committee promised "zero tolererance"; Lord Coe called for a "robust response" from the IAAF and Sir Craig Reedie, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, declared the allegations required "swift and close scrutiny". 

Unfortunately we have heard all these fine words before. But where’s the action that is supposedly to speak louder?

There has been so much pussyfooting around the subject that it is good to hear Coe’s predecessor as British Olympic Association (BOA) chair, Lord Colin Moynihan, come out and underscore what should be done, saying: "It is time for far-reaching change. There should be a lifetime bans for athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs and the coach and network who supplied them.

"We [in Britain] need the Government to step in and make performance-enhancing drugs-taking illegal, as it is in France, Austria and Italy."

Quite. As BOA chair Moynihan fought for - but sadly lost - the case for lifetime bans from the Olympics. Subsequent events show he was bang on the button. The current deterrents are hopelessly inadequate.

For decades now athletics has endured one crisis after another but just how ineffective it has been in dealing with them is typified by the appearance of an unrepentant Gatlin in Beijing.

What on earth is someone who has twice been suspended for doping offences doing there? Of course he won’t be alone among miscreants. A myriad of ex-druggies will be brazenly running jumping and throwing. What credibility does this give the sport? Who says cheats never prosper?

The latest revelations come two months after a BBC Panorama documentary about doping in athletics, allegedly surrounding Farah’s American coach Alberto Salazar, which he has vehemently denied.

They also follow claims about systematic and endemic doping in Russia, who top the list of nations with the alleged percentage of abnormal blood tests, closely followed by Ukraine - which must make Bubka feel somewhat uncomfortable as he enters the final stages of the electoral race with Coe.

There is no doubt now that doping has to be top of both their agendas, which it does not appear to have been up to now.

However, other sports, not least in Coe’s Britain, cannot afford to look on smugly as athletics squirms under the spotlight.

There are currently some 50 athletes from eight different sports under sanction from UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) following positive tests, with rugby and boxing being the greatest offenders.

Hardly a week goes by without notification from UKAD that a rugby player from either code has been banned for a positive test.

And not that it can make a scrap of difference, but surely boxer David Price, an Olympic bronze medallist from Beijing, deserves to have the result of his 22nd pro heavyweight bout with Tony Thompson stricken from the records after the ridiculously belated disclosure that the American failed a drugs test after knocking out the Liverpudlian for the second time two years ago.

Only now do we learn that Thompson, 43, who halted Price in both February and July 2013, tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide - which is classified as a diuretic and masking agent - after their July rematch in Liverpool. 

Thompson has certainly chosen a bad time to argue that doping in sport should be legalised - providing everyone knows about it.

He feels performance enhancing drugs are so common that one solution is to accept their use.

"Doping in any sport, but especially boxing, you have the people with money: the haves, the people with money, are using all the drugs they want," he said.

"They're able to cheat and get away with it, so as a way to combat that, everybody should take whatever it is they want and declare it. Just as long as nobody gets killed."

So that’s all right then? The trouble is, someone just might get killed.

In no sport is the impact of drugs felt more clearly than boxing because lives really are at risk, especially when punches are super-charged by chemicals.

What makes the Thompson case so daft is that he has fought four times since an 18-month ban imposed by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) was never made public and was only enforceable in the UK. Why? And it actually expired in May.

But why was this kept under wraps? Price only learnt of it a week ago. An insider in his camp said the second defeat caused him to "seriously question himself - he was low, he thought his career was over", and accelerated his decline in which a brief comeback culminated in another KO by German Erkan Teper last month.

UKAD say the delay in Thompson's failed drugs test being revealed was a consequence of the American's response to the charge. "It’s an unusual one for us as the case came to a conclusion after the ban had expired. Our normal process is that we don’t publish, or comment on, a decision until due legal process has been completed and in Thompson’s case this was only concluded late last week after he failed to progress his appeal and it was dismissed."

I don’t buy that. Nor is it acceptable that the BBBofC should be compliant in hushing up the ban they had imposed, a situation similar to that of British boxer Kid Galahad, whose two-year suspension for ingesting steroids was not revealed until a year after he failed a test.

Sometimes getting information from sports authorities can be as irksome as having a tooth extracted without painkillers. Yet boxing is a sport which needs transparency.

Thompson argued that the banned substance entered his body through a medication taken for high blood pressure - not to control his weight or hide other substances - but that he didn't provide sufficient proof from a medical professional to support this.

He also claimed to be unaware that hydrochlorothiazide was prohibited but was given a separate 12-month ban by the Austrian Boxing Federation for the presence of the same substance when fighting Kubrat Pulev in August 2013, three weeks after UKAD contacted him about their case. 

Sauerland, Price's promoters, are now seeking to have the fight annulled. Quite right. But scant consolation to Price who was entitled to know the moment Thompson failed the test of the possibility that something dodgy was a foot. Whether knowing about Thompson’s violation would have made a difference to Price, we can’t say. But he had a right to know. We all did.

Just as we do about the pharmaceutical skulduggery and a system which allows convicted abusers like Gatlin back into showpiece events through a revolving door of token suspensions.