The time is not so outrageous that our suspicions are automatically aroused. Just under 11 seconds is reasonable for modern women, and if the race to the line did emphasise Nesterenko’s power, then the style of the runner-up, America’s 5ft 3in Lauryn Williams, was a smaller, slimmer runner obliged to use quick leg speed to compensate for the leverage and the force that has taken over sprint athletics.
After her, Veronica Campbell represented Jamaica, and then Ivet Lalova, the astounding new discovery from Bulgaria whose time of 11-dead was far from the breathtaking 10.77 she produced in Plovdiv in June. But the stars were the spectators. They hid their disappointment, their betrayal over the travesty that removed Katarina Thanou from this final. They ignored, or possibly warmed to the fact these were eight finalists whom they could barely recognise because drug issues had decimated the field. They simply took on trust what they saw, as a runner from Belarus beat an American, who edged out a Jamaican, who in turn was faster than a Bulgarian.
Let us hope there is nothing in the testing to smear this moment. Let us cling to the hope that some runners who would certainly have broken the Olympic oath and cheated their way on to the podium were the first of many chemically assisted athletes to get the message that, at last, sports are serious about squeezing the life out of the druggies.
I said hope because I share the deep uncertainty of what passes before our eyes on the track and in the pool, the weightlifting hall, almost everywhere.
Look to the electronic scoreboard before every heat and final, and the world record of 10.49, set 15 years ago, reminds us of Florence Griffith-Joyner, the painted American runner who set marks that no woman this weekend has come close to. Flo Jo died in her sleep at the age of 38.
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Look in the shop windows of Athens, and a female runner not unlike Flo Jo in muscle and bulk, stares out. The shopkeepers have not yet taken down the life-size cut-out figures of Thanou and Kostas Kenteris, excluded from the Games after their bizarre disappearance as the dope testers closed in.
Look at the women’s 100 metres entry list, and it is stripped of three Americans — Torri Edwards and Kelli White who are serving doping bans, and Marion Jones, who is under a United States Anti Doping Agency investigation and who failed to qualify while accusations were running rife.
Then look at the track. Are they all clean? Dare we admire their effort, their aspiration, their search for explosive speed, balance and control in the Olympic ideal? As they rush past in a blur of acceleration, you try to tell yourself that this time it is pure. You say over and over in your mind that the unprecedented intrusion into athletes’ privacy, the advanced testing and supposedly inhibiting surveillance, and the warnings from Flo Jo to Thanou, will persuade the modern generation the risk is not worth the prize.
As a Brit, you watch Abi Oyepitan, born in London but raised in infancy in her parents’ homeland of Nigeria. Up to her fifth place in the semi-final, on a time fractionally outside her 11.17 best, she ran to her potential. By training with male athletes, Oyepitan has raised her ability possibly as far as she humanly can. Reaching last night’s semi-finals was some accomplishment for a 23-year-old woman who barely a month ago managed to achieve the qualifying time.
Once she found the speed, she held on to it. Yet runners from seven countries clocked faster times at these Olympics — and most remain half a second down on the scary Griffith-Joyner.
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Flo Jo never failed a test, but retired abruptly when mandatory out of competition testing was announced in 1992. She died, according to the autopsy, of asphyxiation caused by a fit due to congenital brain disorder.
Marion Jones has not failed a drug test, despite all the accusations by her former husband and by her links to the disgraced BALCO laboratory in California.
Sport would be a more compelling attraction, and would be what the vast majority of people want it to be, if we could believe what our eyes feast on, especially at the Olympics.
Merlene Ottey continues to reach the semi-finals at 44 years of age. New hopes including Oyepitan, Williams and Lalova, have arrived.
Williams, who lifts weights with Miami NFL football players and races them in practice, says: “It’s time for a new era, time for a change. I know that the faster you run, the less they’re going to think you’re clean. It’s not fair, but we have to deal with that.”
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Indeed, they do. The days of Wilma Rudolf and Evelyn Ashford flowing to victory predate the East German systemic doping and the now global chemically assisted performers. The cost of all of that, and the tolerance until now of the Olympic godfathers and the IAAF to it, will be the inheritance of this and the coming generations.
We are damned if we do suspect them without cause, but history teaches us we are naïve if we simply give them our hearts and our praise.