Olympic hangover means missed opportunity for Rio’s Paralympics

Let’s not pretend that this, for the most part, is somehow different.

On Monday, Michael Gallagher, Australia’s cycling gold medallist from the last two Paralympics, took to his Facebook page and ‘fessed up. Given what we know about doping, he at least deserves some credit for not compounding his cheating with a string of predictable lies and, still, all of this sounds so depressingly familiar. Suspended by the Australian authorities after failing a test in June, he came clean about his EPO use. “I had many ways of justifying this use for Para sport which in hindsight were merely just dark, paranoid, and selfish justifications to talk myself into it,” he wrote before saying he did it all alone.

However you can be sure he is not alone. Nowhere near it.