“It’s elementary my dear Watson,”– nothing is ever elementary in the Olympics

So the Olympics has had to cope with equal amounts of disasters as with triumphs and the growing up process has been at best painful as the World’s largest sporting event has got to grips with an ever demanding press and skeptical spectators over the cleanliness of the athletes competing.

From the humiliating spectacle of Canadian Ben Johnson being stripped of his 100 metre gold medal in the 1988 Games after testing positive for anabolic steroids to the tragedy that engulfed the 1972 Games in Munich when 18 people were killed following a Palestinian terrorist attack on the Israeli team the Olympic movement has had to rebuild image of the Games.

The IOC’s protestations that they were fighting hard against drugs was not helped when the then head of athletics was captured on camera asking IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch if there was any way Johnson could be spared, not for the sake of the athlete but for the sport–the answer was a firm no.

It’s image took a further battering later when several scientists came forward and revealed that the 1984 Games– the first that saw Samaranch take charge and the birth of the commercial Olympics – in Los Angeles had been littered with positive dope tests, but that the samples had mysteriously disappeared.

However, if Samaranch thought he had it bad he should have consulted his two predecessors Avery Brundage– a former Olympian himself– and Lord Killanin.

Munich was Brundage’s last Games but if he wanted to go out on a high note he was to be sorely disappointed as the Palestinian terror group Black September broke into the Olympic village killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine hostage.

Brundage issued a somewhat typical patrician statement the next morning as 2000 German police officers surrounded the village aiming to make up for the appalling lapse in security that had allowed the outrage to happen in the first place.

“The status quo of the Games has been interrupted by an assassination committed by terrorist criminals,” his statement read and the Games were subsequently cancelled for the day for the first time in their history.

However, it was to get worse as allowed to fly to Munich Airport the police became trigger happy and in the resulting shootout five terrorists were killed, one policeman, one of the helicopter pilots and eight more athletes.

Although Brundage declared the next day that `the Games must go on’ few had the stomach for the fight and the very future of the Olympics was called into question.

Killanin managed to keep it going but with an African boycott at Montreal in 1976 and the United States boycotting Moscow in 1980 over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, they rapidly started to lose their main function of being a sporting occasion and instead became a political football.

That’s not to say that other host cities could smile contentedly at the misadventures that befell Munich, Montreal and Moscow as they too fell prey to the Olympic disaster syndrome – none more so than Paris in 1900.

Just four years after the Olympics had been reborn in Athens Paris almost killed them off with a disastrous hosting which reached its base with the athletics and the swimming competitions.

The swimmers had to compete in the Seine and doing backstroke was probably the most risky as the swimmers had to contend with swimming under or around the boats in the river as their owners stubbornly refused to hold up their trade while the Games were going on.

Furthermore the athletes found that the track they ran on was a mudpatch as several got stuck in the mud while others saw their discus and hammers disappear into the trees that surrounded the track leading to complete and utter confusion.

The Paris organisers showed they had learnt little when 24 years later they hosted Games and prepared a cross country course more suited to an Army training camp than athletes.

Aside from the knee high thistles and weeds pricking the athletes physique as well as conscience they had to cope with poisonous fumes belching from a local energy plant which left several athletes running the opposite direction and others lying writhing in agony barely able to breathe.

As for the athletes, two stand out among a plethora of candidates, a Pakistani swimmer and an Italian marathoner.

The Pakistani appearing in the 100 metre backstroke in London in 1948 stripped off his dressing gown to discover to his utter embarrassment that he had forgotten to put on his trunks.

Trying to salvage his honour he jumped into the swimming pool but was promptly disqualified rather unfairly as he was competing in the one event that required a start in the water.

Italian Dorando Pietri had his heart broken thanks to some thoughtless English judges at the 1908 Games in London.

Having led the marathon for virtually all of the 26 mile she collapsed just 100 metres out from the line and was helped to his feet by the judges – crossing the line eventually.

However, the same English judges– who were roundly criticised for partisan decisions– then disqualified him when the runner-up objected to what had happened.

Although then English Queen Alexandra tried to make up for it with a gold trophy the Italian never forgave this piece of British unfair play. “I thought the British were the masters of fairplay…well I spit on that because I know what their understanding of the word is and it isn’t what the civilised World believes it means,” he said years later.

Kipling may have started this piece but it was another literary giant who played a more physical role in Pietri’s misfortune, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Conan Doyle was one of the judges who helped the Italian over the line but his catch phrase for Holmes, responding to his sidekick Dr Watson, could not be less appropriate.

“It’s elementary my dear Watson,”– nothing is ever elementary in the Olympics– come triumph or disaster.