Athletics: How can we watch Jones without a twang of suspicion?

When the great athlete Marion Jones discovered at the Sydney Olympics that her then husband, the shot put champion C J Hunter, had tested positive for steroids, it was reasonable to put the drift in their relationship down to heart-searching reflections on ethics in sport.

Wrong. C J's marital failings must have been of a different nature. How else can we interpret her decision to work with the Canadian sprint coach, Charlie Francis? It was Francis who helped turn Ben Johnson into the yellow-eyed steroid abuser shamed before the world at the Seoul Olympics. He may, like all those who err on the side of cheating in track and field, proclaim a new working morality. He may shine in a glow of redemption, but how can we ever again see the superb movement of Jones without a huge twang of suspicion?

In the climate of athletics – and cycling and swimming – the force of guilt by association is irresistible. Why would Michelle Smith, the Irish Olympic gold-medal swimmer who was found guilty of drug cheating after several years of indignantly claimed innocence, not understand the suspicion that surrounded her triumphs at Atlanta, when they were inevitably linked with her marriage to the convicted Dutch drug-abuser Erik de Bruin – a union which accompanied her astonishing transformation from mediocrity to world-beater?

Why would the Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong rail against the suspicions that accompanied his visits to Dr Michel Ferrari, an acknowledged expert in the administration of performance-enhancing drugs?

Why would Jones, the most spectacular woman Olympian since the late Florence Griffith-Joyner shattered records at Seoul without inspiring a single round of applause in the section of the stand reserved for members of the International Olympic Committee, make an alliance with the most notorious coach of them all?

It cannot be stupidity, at least not in the case of Armstrong, a demonstrably intelligent man whose own immersion in medical books helped him to beat cancer. Armstrong's claims that he is clean have never been contradicted by a drug test, a fact which reinforces his conviction that he is entitled to consult anyone he likes as he maintains an extraordinary level of competitive fitness.

Unfortunately for him, he can shout it from every peak in the Pyrenees and the Massif Central without dispersing the cynicism. The time of presumed innocence is long gone. We are reminded of quite how long by Jones's training arrangements. For they no longer carry the power to shock. The truth is they scarcely provoke a shrug – or a sigh. We've done all that – more times than it is comfortable to recall.