New Zealand followers of track and field athletics know only too well the effect doping can have on an individual athlete.
Shot put champion Valerie Adams was robbed of her Olympic medal when now disgraced Belarusian shot putter Nadzeya Ostapchuk took the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics. Ostapchuk was later stripped of the gold medal after testing positive in two separate drug tests at the Games, and New Zealand's Adams was promoted to the top spot.
But the latest revelations from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) have lifted the intensity of the debate and there are suggestions Russia could be banned from international athletics, including the 2016 Olympics.
A commission established by Wada found a ''deeply rooted culture of cheating'' in Russian athletics, with which, it said, Russian state security services colluded, and also identified what it called systemic failures in the global governing body - the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
At one point, the commission said the Wada-accredited anti-doping laboratory in Moscow destroyed 1417 samples just before the arrival in Moscow of a Wada audit team.
IAAF president Sebastian Coe was elected to the position on a platform of bringing in change and halting the endemic taking of performance-enhancing drugs.
Already, his task to meet his promises seems mountainous in scale. Just where will he start?
Lord Coe is talking about dark days ahead. He gave Russia until the end of the week to respond to the accusations and said the IAAF council would then discuss possible sanctions.
The international police body, Interpol, says it will co-ordinate a global investigation into suspected corruption and doping in athletics.
It is naive to think the problem is restricted to Russia. Every track and field athlete is now under suspicion, just as many top cyclists faced accusations of cheating after Lance Armstrong finally admitted to doping throughout his Tour de France career.
The latest allegations tar every athlete in every sport with the brush of suspicion.
Already, Fifa is facing bribe scandals, its president, Sepp Blatter, has been suspended and 14 officials and marketing executives have been indicted.
Switzerland is investigating the awarding of two World Cups: to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
Russia finished second behind the United States in athletics at the 2012 Olympics with 17 medals, eight of them gold.
In one sense, at least, the scandal could prove more compromising than the Fifa affair.
There has never been a suggestion the Fifa corruption has affected results on the pitch, at the World Cup, for example.
At present, one of New Zealand's former cricket stars, Chris Cairns, is on trial in London for perjury in relation to match-fixing.
Cricketers from the Indian subcontinent have already served prison time for not giving their best efforts on the field as a way of engineering the result of a match.
One of the major issues which Lord Coe will not be able to control is the influx of money into the rich athletics meetings around the world.
Appearance money, prize money and valuable gifts are offered to the world's top athletes to appear in meetings: incentive enough to risk the taking of drugs to enhance performance.
The reach of graft in global sport is immense but it has not been possible to curb doping and corruption.
Russia says it will follow the recommendations of Wada but can that be believed?
Has the world already forgotten the annexation of Crimea and the bombing campaign in Syria?
Russia goes its own way.
The best option may be to ban Russia completely and focus on other countries, such as Jamaica, where doping has been proved but is not so widespread.
