Performance-enhancing drugs are the scourge of modern sport. No sooner has one scandal hit the headlines than along comes more suspicion and more disgrace. No misdeeds since the 1970s, however, are in the same league as the systematic and state-sponsored drug cheating in Russia.
This is so much more than individuals or even sporting bodies breaking the rules. This has links to high levels in the Russian Government and the Russian security service, as well as sporting authorities, and it mocks the whole drug-testing system.
Complex and covert covering up, samples disappearing or switched - testing was perverted in blatantly corrupt and dishonest ways.
A report from Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), published this week was as damning as observers expected. The Russian track and field team was already banned.
Then, the report revealed hundreds of examples of disappearing and substituted positive samples affecting more than 30 summer and winter Olympic sports. No doubt, those instances are only part of what went on.
Some Russian athletes might have been able to steer clear of the pervasive drug culture. But such is the extent of the fraud that all based in Russia are caught in the net.
The Olympic ideal is even now tarnished by suspicions about drugs and questions are being asked about Jamaicans, Kenyans and Ethiopians. United States athletes have had a poor record over the years, and who knows what else and where else performance-enhancing drugs have been used. But Russia is in its own league. It has inherited the Eastern European sporting drug culture, and for the sake of money, prestige and power has been willing to push ahead with its sophisticated drug programme.
The ball is now in the International Olympic Committee's court. Its president, Thomas Bach, has said "the findings of the report show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games''.
He said the IOC would therefore not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation involved. The IOC is awaiting the outcome of an appeal on the banning of Russian track and field athletes, due this week, before announcing those sanctions.
Because the Russian state apparatus was involved, the IOC cannot get away with anything less than a total ban.
As it is, the enjoyment of sport has been sullied by all the doubts about whether athletes are clean. The doubts become magnified into certainties if Russia is allowed to compete.
Any semblance of Olympic ideals becomes preposterous. What is left of the credibility and integrity of the games - at least in the major sports - is in tatters.
Matters go beyond just Olympic sports. What, for example, of doping in Russian football, in a country where the 2018 World Cup is to be held? What of any sport where fame and funds are at stake?
The Russian scandal starkly illustrates just how difficult the war on drugs in sport is to win. Just as in the Lance Armstrong cycling fiasco, it took the revelations of whistleblowers before real progress was made.
How many other instances are there around the world where there is no whistleblower, or where a potential whistleblower is silenced or ignored? Such people warrant praise and support in the ongoing battle against corrupt practices.
No-one should be naive about the temptation of drugs and money, not just in Russia but everywhere. Even if Russia is banned, as it must be, that will not stop efforts by others to extract premium performances via chemical assistance.
Wada and all sporting organisations must be suspicious, vigilant, smart and firm in uncovering drug cheats and dealing with them. And no-one, not even the Russian Government, can be too big to avoid sanctions.
