The war on the use of drugs in sport might have won a few skirmishes in Athens, but one gets the impression that the fight for fairness will soon be fighting on many new fronts - combating the use of genetic engineering in sport. If technology continues to advance at current rates, at which point will we recognise that the effective policing of athletic fairness has become impossible.

A story in New Scientist magazine this week tells of the gentic engineering project which produced Marathon mice - mice capable as running twice as far as normal mice. Drugs that might have a similar effect are already being tested on humans, raising fears that athletes might soon have a new very effective ways to cheat.