Rio de Janeiro: It's being characterised as the Cold War recast. America against China. America against Russia. Throw in a Hungarian swimmer under grave suspicion, introduce in an Australian unafraid to brand a rival a drug cheat, and a western-eastern bloc picture distils.
After only three full days of competition in Rio, journalists from around the globe were peppering the International Olympic Committee with questions. The topic: one of sport's stinkiest, with a stench that seems to become more pronounced here by the day.
![Russia's Yulia Efimova cries after placing second in the women's 100m breaststroke final.](/web/20160811190010im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/o/f/i/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqp9pd.png/1470840123002.jpg)
Doping and corruption caused the countdown to Rio's grand opening to be angst ridden. On Tuesday, members of the world's sporting press wanted to know just what the IOC is going to do about a tense and ugly fallout that appears to be escalating, rather than fading away, as the 2016 Olympics take full flight.
Despite bald and shocking evidence of a systematic, state-sponsored doping program in Russia unearthed by a World Anti-Doping Agency probe, the IOC chose not to apply a blanket ban on that nation's athletes on the eve of these Games. It's a decision many think looks particularly weak in light of the International Paralympic Committee's verdict to do the opposite.
Now, athletes are hurling the most incriminating of insults at one another; Australia's Mack Horton being but one who has openly called a rival a cheat.
Similar narratives are being writ large in publications like The New York Times about American athletes, like Lilly King, who has been as subtle in her disapproval of Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova as Horton was about Sun Yang.
Meanwhile, Russian athletes are being booed by crowds in Brazilian stadiums.
The question begs: how will the IOC seek to limit damage and decipher – for the benefit of everyone – the fiction from the fact?
Before a hungry audience in Rio on Tuesday, it was the job of IOC communications chief, Mark Adams, to answer that vexed question.
He began by saying there will be 5500 anti-doping tests carried out on the 10,500-odd athletes competing in these Games; 4500 urine samples, 1000 blood.
"Allegations will always be made," Adams said.
"But I think we have a pretty good system, we also have very much a very good pre-testing system. We got together a taskforce between the international [sports] federations, the national Olympic committees, WADA and ourselves to target people we thought would be in at-risk sports or from at-risk counties and I think we targeted an extra 700, off the top of my head, before the Games to check that they were clean. So there's a lot going on.
"Can we do more? We can always do more. Doping is a little bit like crime in society, you're never going to be able to stop it entirely, but we can fight it and we can do our very best to stop it." Modern Olympic protocol dictates the top five place-getters in every final are drug tested. Another two competitors are also selected at random.
All of these samples are kept for 10 years, available for re-testing.
This system, Adams pointed out on Tuesday morning, has seen 98 competitors from the last two Olympics test positive retrospectively and in many cases — according to the IOC chief — banned from Rio.
By Tuesday afternoon the IOC announced four more.
IOC president Thomas Bach said on Monday he'd like to see life bans imposed on athletes in future for what he termed "serious" doping offences. This is not new. The IOC has pushed the case previously, including against proven Russian dopers before Rio, but lost at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
"It's certainly something the president's very keen on and I think it appears that the public is very keen on," Adams said.
"It's just a matter of trying to find a way which is legally sound to be able to do it." Until then, sports lovers will continue booing here and – well beyond Brazil – others will wonder who and what can truly be believed.
If the opening four days of these Olympics are any guide, athletes will go on flagrantly branding contemporary rivals as deceptive, doping, frauds in full view of the world.
They will even win the backing of their country, like Horton has, when they do so.
"We would obviously ask people to respect each other as athletes," Adams said in closing statement on the topic, at least for Tuesday's sitting.
"But we wouldn't restrict the right of people to say things. That's entirely their prerogative."