Athletics faces its toughest Olympic Games test since the Ben Johnson scandal when the competition gets underway here today with competitors under intense pressure to drag the sport out of the mire into which it has slumped.
Their task has been made all the harder with the saga over Greek Olympic medalists Kostadinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou.
Thankfully for the organizers the duo finally caved in and withdrew from the team on Wednesday despite still protesting their innocence over missing a mandatory drugs test.
With the case of world 100m champion Torri Edwards also resolved as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected her appeal against a two-year ban, the organizers are hoping the sport can begin.
It is little wonder that while athletics cleans out its stable of drugstakers -- with the stars as vulnerable to detection as the minnows -- there are worried brows at the sport's governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
Most pressure in the cauldron of an Olympics athletics extravaganza will be on Marion Jones. Clouded by allegations of doping, the former golden girl of the sport will compete in the long jump -- ironically considered the three-time Olympic champion's weakest event -- and probably the 4x100m relay.
With most of the athletes implicated in the scandal surrounding the BALCO drugs laboratory, including Jones' boyfriend and 100m world record holder Tim Montgomery, failing to qualify for the Games, it will be up to those who have made it here to mount a salvage operation for a sport that has struggled to make an impact Stateside since the end of the Carl Lewis era.
The US will look to several veterans for glory.
Allen Johnson bids to regain the Olympic 110m hurdles title he won in 1996 but lost in 2000, 37-year-old Gail Devers seeks an elusive 100m hurdles crown after twice winning the 100m flat title while Maurice Greene will try to retain his 100m.
"The atmosphere is very tough and it is up to the athletes to perform and get rid of some of the negativity," said Greene, who now has the word GOAT (Greatest of All Time) tattooed on his right biceps.
Greene has predicted a United States 1-2-3 with him, Justin Gatlin and Shawn Crawford the medalists, though he has failed to justify that optimism in his European campaign where he went down to defeats to Francis Obikwelu and twice to the up and coming Jamaican Asafa Powell.
The Olympics will also be graced by another of Ethiopia's distance stars in Kenenisa Bekele, who has been told by his federation he has to run in the 5,000m and 10,000m but is likely they relent to opt for the latter.
If so his compatriot Haile Gebrselassie's remarkable reign will be over.
For the remarkable 22-year-old Bekele, failure would not see the end of his Olympic dream but for Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj a similar result in the 1,500m would see his hopes of landing the blue riband event in an Olympics terminated after two heartbreaking failures in Atlanta and Sydney.
"If I look at my record in the Olympics, you will see that I am not a lucky athlete," said El Guerrouj. "Hopefully I can break the jinx which has struck me over the last eight years."
His 29-race unbeaten streak came to an end in the Rome Golden League this year, his first defeat since Noah Ngeny of Kenya deprived him of gold in Sydney. His likeliest nemesis this time is another Kenyan, Bernard Lagat, who beat El Guerrouj in Zurich this month.
Lagat also knows what it is like to be branded a drugs cheat as he missed the world championships last year after testing positive for the endurance booster EPO.
That test was subsequently overturned because the B sample did not match the A.
Now everyone connected with the sport will be dearly hoping for an Olympics remembered more for results on the track than in the dope-testing room.
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