This week has produced an abundance of confusing cases.

The one which immediately grabbed my attention concerned the long-awaited announcement on International Olympic Committee (IOC) retests from the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics.

"The IOC confirms that the reanalysis of all samples taken during the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin has been completed, and this reanalysis did not result in any positive cases," a short announcement posted on the IOC website revealed. "There are no ongoing proceedings and this reanalysis process is now definitively closed."

This apparently ended a process which had been dragging on for 11 years despite similar processes for Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 having been completed far quicker. The verdict also revealed precious little about what had happened in the case involving Estonia's two-time gold medallist Kristina Šmigun-Vähi, the winner of the 7.5 + 7.5 kilometres double pursuit and 10km classical cross-country titles in the Italian city.

To briefly reiterate, it was first reported in the Russian press in February 2014 that Šmigun-Vähi had failed a re-test from Turin. 

She published a statement soon afterwards in which she admitted molecules had been discovered during re-analysis, indicating use of forbidden substances, but revealing no further details. 

We then endured radio silence for well over two years before reports surfaced in October 2016 that the 40-year-old was facing a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) hearing that week due to a failed re-test. This was never announced by CAS or the IOC, to be clear, but in comments made by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Athletes’ Committee chair Beckie Scott to Norwegian broadcaster TV2.

CAS sent out a wonderfully useless statement when pressed for confirmation earlier this year that such a case existed. "In accordance with the confidentiality provisions set out in the Code of Sports-related Arbitration, CAS can neither confirm, deny or make comments on the alleged existence and status of this matter," they said. Lovely.

Nothing more has been heard since and nobody involved has made any official or unofficial comments on the matter.

From what I can glean, some sort of confidentiality order was taken out, possibly in the Civil Courts, before being imposed again by CAS.

Under the rules of the Lausanne-based panel, awards "shall not be made public unless all parties agree, or the division President so decides".

The initial rumour in this case, then, was that Šmigun-Vähi's legal team somehow imposed the injunction to stop information becoming public. A second revisionist view has now surfaced, though, in which it has been suggested that the IOC themselves requested confidentiality because the case had somehow collapsed on a technicality and, perhaps, they are keen for this to remain private to avoid it setting a precedent.

To borrow one of the favourite sayings of the IOC communications team, this is "pure speculation" and I do not know for sure what happened.

But the outcome clearly is not in the spirit of transparency which they claim to abide by.

The lack of information fosters a sense of secrecy even if there is actually a simple explanation. It also makes it difficult for legal teams in the future if they are unable to access prior cases before building their defence.

It seems fairly clear, without wishing to sound like a lecturing parent or teacher, that openness and honesty generally helps with doping cases.

The new case involving reigning Tour de France and Vuelta a España champion Chris Froome provides a good illustration of this.

The Briton submitted a sample on September 7 during the Vuelta which had more than twice the permitted 1,000 nanograms per millilitre concentration of salbutamol. 

As the substance is listed on the WADA prohibited list as a specified substance, Froome has not been automatically suspended by the International Cycling Union (UCI) but must now explain why the finding occurred to a Legal Anti-Doping Services panel. It only became public after an investigation by the The Guardian and French newspaper Le Monde.

It is not a simple case. Asthma sufferer Froome argues that he did not take more than the regulated puffs on his inhaler and that there must be another explanation for his high level. There are precedents where athletes have been cleared after successfully arguing they were not to blame, but not many, and others in similar positions, including Norwegian cross-country skier Martin Johnsrud Sundby as well as a cluster of cyclists, have usually received short suspensions as well as being stripped of results from the event at which they tested positive. Most of these also recorded lower levels of salbutamol than Froome did. 

Italian rider Leonard Piepoli, one of the only figures to be cleared completely when he failed for the same substance in 2007, subsequently confessed to using continuous erythropoietin receptor activator and received a two-year suspension in 2009.

Froome has appointed a lawyer, London-based Mike Morgan, with a phenomenal record in clearing athletes, but the case will depend more on the quality of the scientific reasoning rather than his legal know-how.

I have been struck by the blasé reaction of so much of the British sporting public. Most people I have spoken to do not feel surprised or particularly sympathetic towards Froome given the way in which Team Sky are perceived as having pushed the rules over the last year.

It follows a prolonged saga over the mysterious "jiffy bag" delivered to Froome's former team-mate Sir Bradley Wiggins during the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné. A UK Anti-Doping probe was closed last month after no evidence was found, but it left a salutary taste in the mouth nonetheless, especially when considering the holier-than-thou rhetoric of the team's "zero-tolerance" approach.

Froome, to be clear, had emerged from the Fancy Bears' revelations about Therepeutic Use Exemptions unscathed and had never been directly or indirectly implicated in anything like this before.

But he chose to stay at Team Sky and is thus intrinsically associated with the team. It is likely that he will always now have an asterisk over his name regardless of what happens in the salbutamol case.

The Froome case has also re-opened some old political wounds within the UCI. Brian Cookson supposedly found out about the result one day before he was defeated by David Lappartient for the world governing body's top job. It seemed a bit strange that he should then say in an interview that the reputation of Team Sky should be "reinstated" before the case became public.

It was also strange that one of the first figures to react and claim the case to be a "disaster" for the UCI was Cookson's predecessor Pat McQuaid, the Irishman who was, at one stage, thought to be angling for the position of Honorary President under the new regime.

"It's going to be very difficult to see how they [Team Sky] can come out of this with any credibility at all to be honest with you," McQuaid told the BBC in a tone which did not exactly convey dismay. "It begs a lot of questions."

For good measure, he added: "How Brian, knowing all of those facts, could turn around and say, 'you need to hand their credibility back to Team Sky', I just don't understand it, it's beyond me."

Speaking of politics, we have also had a usual flurry of developments in the never-ending Russian doping scandal.

There are two elements here that have struck me this week.

The first concerns the "OAR Implementation Group" chaired by Aruba's Nicole Hoevertsz and also including Slovakian shooter Danka Bartekova and IOC director general Christophe de Kepper. An IOC release last week made clear that they will have the final say in rubber-stamping Russian eligibility decisions made by an "Invitation Review" panel chaired by France’s Valérie Fourneyron.

Is this not becoming needlessly complicated? IOC President Thomas Bach implied following the Executive Board meeting in Lausanne that Hoevertsz's panel would be responsible more for technical issues such as the wording inscribed on "neutral" uniforms in Pyeongchang. But, even though its members have distinctly few anti-doping related qualifications, they have now been awarded ultimate responsibility for defining eligibility?

As ever, the IOC would help themselves if they provided more information rather than "the IOC will communicate in due course" line that we seem to get in response to most questions these days.

A second observation brings us, in a roundabout way, back to where we started with a historic doping case from the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics.

Cross-country skiers Martin Tauber, Jürgen Pinter and Johannes Eder were among six Austrian athletes accused of blood doping after a raid by Italian police and drug testers. An IOC disciplinary panel chaired by none other than Thomas Bach awarded the trio life bans from the Olympic Games and, crucially, this was upheld by CAS after an appeal.

"Although the imposition of a 10-year ban, for example, would effectively eliminate the appellants' ability to compete as an athlete in an Olympic Games again, it would still be limited enough to allow the appellants to return to the Olympic Games as coaches or support staff in the future," read the verdict, which is worth highlighting in full. 

"Each of these athletes were active or willing participants in a broader scheme to commit doping offences. Moreover, appellants have shown an apparent lack of understanding of the wrongfulness of their conduct, as shown by their continued denials of such conduct. 

"In view of these serious improprieties and collective behaviour, as compared to some prior CAS cases involving wrongful individual conduct, the appellants should not be afforded the possibility of participating in future Olympic Games in any capacity. For these reasons, it is entirely appropriate and proportionate that the appellants be banned from all future participation in the Olympic Games."

This, clearly, will be the crucial precedent in the upcoming cases involving Russian athletes receiving a similar life ban from the Olympic Games. The key difference here from all subsequent failed attempts for an Olympic life ban - including of Russians to have previously failed tests before Rio 2016 - is that the "conspiracy" here, like with the Russian case, took place at the Olympics itself. It is thus not a case of double jeopardy and can be justified in the Olympic Charter.

We will see, but CAS undoubtedly will feel pressure like never before early next year.

I just hope they publish the results this time.