Drug-created sporty body
Close to 80 sportsmen and women affiliated to national sporting organisations are expected to have cases heard before either the New Zealand Sports Tribunal or NZ Rugby Judiciary after being caught allegedly buying banned substances, mainly fat-stripping steroid clenbuterol, off an illegal website.
The website, clenbuterol.co.nz, has since been shut down by medical regulatory agency Medsafe, and its owner Joshua Francis Townshend was jailed after admitting to 129 offences under the Medicines Act.
David Howman headed the World Anti-Doping Agency from 2003 to 2016 and said the fact New Zealanders were involved would come as no surprise to those who worked on the front lines of the fight against performance-enhancing drugs in sport. And if it was happening on this scale in New Zealand, then you can imagine the scope of the problem in other countries where there is not such an expectation of fair play.
Sport New Zealand chief executive Peter Miskimmin has already briefed new Minister for Sport and Recreation Grant Robertson about the issue and described it as a "massive wake-up call", a phrase repeated by Howman.
"We need to be more alert," Howman said. "If we find this many people in one sting over one short period of time, imagine what you'll find in 10 or so similar operations. The scary thing for me is that New Zealanders are willing to buy this stuff, including supplements, on the net. They don't know what they're buying, or whether it's contaminated."
Many of the alleged cheats are understood to be below elite level. Several may be "gym bunnies" who just happen to be affiliated to other sports through membership of clubs or teams.
This will likely raise the question of whether it is the appropriate use of resources to track down and effectively prosecute low-level offenders.
"The question is do we want drug-free sport or not?" said Nick Paterson, chief executive of Drug Free Sport NZ, the national anti-doping agency. "Anecdotally we know that New Zealanders hate drug cheats."
Comment: Anecdotally. But if everyone's honest with themselves, then we don't want drug-free sports; we want drug-fuelled sports. Because that's what we currently have.
That's also why it's doubly useful to bash Russia for doing it - we get to exculpate ourselves, or at least imagine that we are.