There was nobody else involved and that’s what caught me out at the end of the day It was my sixth out-of-competition test this year. I had five others in 2002 and all were clear.”Looking back, it was na? on my part to do what I did, but it just happened Of course I feel remorse I am in a bad situation now and I regret doing it But I can’t change things now. I have to accept it and get on with things.”Which was what the American sprinter Dennis Mitchell was ultimately obliged to do when he fell foul of the drug testers – after claiming that four cans of beer and five acts of copulation with his wife the night before his test (“It was the lady’s birthday – she deserved a treat”) had been responsible for the excessive level of testosterone found in his urine sample.Then there was the Spanish discus thrower David Martinez, who blamed his positive test for nandrolone on having eaten infected pork. The only logical conclusion I could reach was that, in a lot of cases, the answer was definitely ‘no’.”I realise now that most of the people I’m speaking about on the professional scene are operating on a very sophisticated basis, with proper medical back-up and advice on how not to get caught. My eyes were really opened from conversations I had with people on the professional scene.”I looked at some of the times being consistently run and I asked myself if this was possible naturally. And last month the British cyclist David Millar admitted to French police that he had used EPO and then spoke publicly about the pressure to keep up with the best in the sport that had driven him to cheat – the same motive that Lombard cited yesterday.Speaking from northern Italy, where he had been training for the Olympics, Lombard added: “I don’t want doping in sport, but it has certainly reached epidemic proportions.

In athletics in the early 1990s the British shot putter Neal Brunning confessed his guilt after testing positive for steroids. I am just saying this was the case; this is what I did; and, hands up, I did it I know: nobody has ever admitted they’re guilty Nobody is ever guilty.”That is not strictly true. “I just wanted to be as competitive as I could and have an equal chance with everyone else I am not trying to justify what I did in any way. Having confessed his guilt in an interview with his local newspaper, he will forfeit his place on the Irish team and serve a two-year suspension.”I didn’t set out to try to win medals or to make money,” Lombard told the Irish Examiner. It is not quite a first for track and field, but in telling the world yesterday, “Hands up, I did it,” Cathal Lombard, the Irish distance runner whose positive test for the blood-boosting substance erythropoietin came to light last weekend, made a clean break of sorts for his sport in the drug-shrouded run-up to the Athens Olympics. However, a good guide to the future health of the performance side of the sport is given by the results at junior level.”The changes proposed, which include investment into schools and grass-roots projects, a reform of the competition structure and the streamlining of the sport’s administration,will be overseen over the next 18 months by a Project Board whose director was named yesterday as the former European 5,000m champion Jack Buckner.Having worked widely within the business sector since he retired, Buckner is just the kind of smart operator UK Athletics needs to make things that have seemed obvious for so many years actually come to pass.. “I think it’s a bit of a myth that all our great stars of the past all did it in their spare time.”He raised the example of Sotherton, who quit her job with a bank in Birmingham last year to become a full-time, Lottery-funded athlete.

“We all know it was better in the old days when we walked seven miles to work down the pit,” he said in a sideswipe at those who believed athletes were better when times were hard. It can make you soft.”Of the 64 athletes currently receiving between £20,000 and £30,000 per annum from the Lottery-funded World Class Performance programme, which has spent £25m across all Olympic sports in each of the last four years, less than half have achieved the Olympic A standard qualifying levels this season. It does not make comfortable reading, and Max Jones, who retires as the UK performance director after the Athens Games, has indicated recently that the number of athletes eligible for funding after the Athens Games is likely to drop by almost half.Nevertheless, Jones yesterday offered a staunch defence of the benefits of continued Lottery support. “I think we have to be a bit careful that the National Lottery doesn’t make life too easy,” Cracknell said. “I would be happier if Lottery grants were bonus-related.”More recently, British athletics’ team captain, Darren Campbell, has criticised some fellow athletes for squandering their Lottery money on “PlayStation games and DVDs”, adding: “You can get into a comfort zone where you dream about having a certain type of lifestyle and it’s all about money. Four years down the line, the immediate future looks largely bronze, at best.Radcliffe is made of precisely the same stern stuff as some of these former champions. But there is an excessive pressure on her shoulders, given the absence of any other championship contenders.

And British athletics, as the statistics demonstrate, has never been that solid.For example, according to the widely used means of evaluating championship performances – whereby first place means eight points, and eighth in the final earns one – the most successful Olympics for Britain in the space of the last 20 years were the 1988 Games in Seoul. And yet the absence of a gold medallist in South Korea means those Games do not have a special place in the public consciousness.Stand-out performances by the likes of Coe, Christie and Edwards took place in Games that, statistically, provided a lower level of success for Britain. Team-mates such as Kelly Holmes, Chris Rawlinson, Phillips Idowu and, perhaps, Kelly Sotherton will travel more in reasonable hope than firm expectation.What has happened? Ironically, there are some even within the system who believe that the Lottery money has been bad for Britain’s Olympic hopes.The Olympic fours gold medallist, James Cracknell, has voiced scepticism about the system which has provided an orderly financial backing for increasing numbers of competitors since it was introduced in the wake of the 1996 Olympics. What’s more, the future appeared unusually bright, particularly in the glamorous world of men’s sprinting – where informed voices were suggesting that a generation of young Britons was well placed to challenge the Americans.All this and more money, with more Lottery funding in the pipeline The future looked bright, the future looked golden. The truth is that, ever since the modern Games began, Britain’s fortunes have fluctuated in the Olympic arena, and there has never been a clear pattern to the results.Having said which, there was good reason four years ago, in the aftermath of the last Games in Sydney, to believe that British athletics was in especially robust health.To begin with, the sport found itself in a state of near euphoria after a haul of six medals, with gold going to Edwards and Lewis.