“And here he comes, powering towards the line, can he hold them off, it looks like it, it’s all about the dip to the line, yes. It’s a new world record... 10.27seconds for the 100m, and he’s through to the second round here in Rio.”

Sounds pretty stupid, eh? But, frankly, there is an awful lot of stupidity floating around in elite athletics these days.

This week UK Athletics came out with a series of proposals designed to help restore the credibility of the sport in the wake of a terrible year off the track (and field) which saw more corruption and drugs than your average TV gangster series.

Some of these 14 proposals are pretty sensible – longer bans for drug cheats for example, well duhhh – but the one which really jumps off the page is the suggestion that the existing world records should be annulled and we should start afresh.

While the intention is no doubt honourable, the consequence of doing it would be almost unthinkable.

I have no doubt at all that plenty of the current records were indeed obtained illegally – to be honest, wherever fortune and glory are up for grabs people will always find a way to cheat their way to the top.

However, I also have no doubt that some of the records were not. Some of them were set by honest, hard-working, dedicated athletes that devoted the first 20 or 30 years they spent on this earth to being the best they could possibly be.

Those records glisten with their sweat and tears, they were forged on pavements and hills in the dark hours of January mornings just like this one.

The price of admission to the hall of sporting immortality is paid in pain and sacrifice. These people paid it all. They deserve their accomplishment to be remembered for all time.

However, they probably won’t get that opportunity, not because their record will be expunged – that surely won’t be allowed to happen – but because all the while you’re reading this, dark forces will continue to corrupt sport aiming to win at-all costs.

Technology advances every day and sadly, even now, there is a whole lot more time, effort and money poured into developing drugs which could enhance an athlete’s performance than there is into detecting them. It’s easy to say that has to change but it’s a lot harder to make it change.

If you wiped out the records this summer, then the first crop of new records would possibly be set by athletes who have previously served bans for drugs – people like Justin Gatlin who has incurred six years of bans but produced his fastest times of all after serving them, despite being the wrong side of 30.

No, let the records stand, accept that many of them should come with an asterisk next to them but learn the lessons of why.

We should pour all our hope, energy and effort into inspiring a generation of clean athletes who are dedicated to pushing but not breaking the boundaries of human capability and who know that mental strength should be just as important to success as physical strength.