HOWZAT

It is required behaviour at such a point for the journalist to give all the answers to the world's problems in a couple of pithy phrases and then go to the pub.

Alas, I can only complete 50 per cent of these tasks. At a certain level, the testers are ahead of the game and we may indeed get a clean (or at least undetected) 100 metres. But there are still greater questions of morality and danger, not to mention squeamishness, that lie ahead in the field of genetics. And it's not just the purity of sport that we have to worry about.

Advantage nobody as Federer and Co breeze into town

What do the following have in common: the Olympic Games, the blue whale, Mount Everest, the pyramid of Cheops and the planet Jupiter? Answer: they are the biggest. They are things that not only exemplify but also define the matter of bigness. They are about ultimates.

Expert View

Phelps looked like a bad guy in a Western, the sort that tells Clint they don't like strangers around here

Simon Barnes

• More

• Post a comment

Olympics updates direct to your mobile

Put the Beijing Games in your pocket

Phelps wins first gold with world record

American swimmer sets world record in winning the 400m individual medley and the first of a projected eight gold medals

• Perfect stage for Michael Phelps, Mr Perfection

• Tom Daley heads into the deep

• Race against the clock

Multimedia

• Simon Barnes in Beijing

• Bring back the tug-of-war

• Top 100 Olympic athletes of all time

Related Links

• China confident of drugs battle

Multimedia

• Barnes in Beijing: reading poetry, drinking beer

An Olympic gold medal is the ultimate achievement in anything that is accepted as an Olympic sport. That's what Olympic means. An Olympic gold medal is the prize in comparison with which all other prizes are dross. Nothing can compare with a prize that is only offered every four years, for which most people get but one try.

There is no prize in rowing to compare to the things Redgrave and Pinsent hang around their necks; there is no prize in athletics to compare to the gold medals of Kelly and Lord C; there is no prize in gymnastics to compare to ones won by Nadia Comaneci at the supreme moment of her life and of her sport.

Or to put it another way, what the hell is tennis doing at the Olympic Games? The big event of tennis is not the quadrennial chance to win an Olympic gold medal, it is the four-times-a-year chance to win a grand-slam tournament, or, if you prefer, the once-a-year chance to win Wimbledon.

Roger Federer is here and was doing his press conference yesterday. Good on him for wanting to compete, but there's a bigger event in line for him and it starts on August 25, the day after the Games end: the US Open. There are only 64 players in the singles draw here, half as many as Wimbledon, and they play only three sets, not five. This is a run-of-the-mill ATP event with the unearned bonus of an Olympic gold medal for the winner. Tennis is not an Olympic sport: it's just a sport that they play at the Olympic Games.