The Olympic Games are upon us once again. Every four years the absolute pinnacle of human athletic ability gathers together while the eyes of the world focus on the most widely anticipated competition of all — the struggle to get past the drug tests.

You don't hear a lot about actual athletic events anymore unless one happens to be going on during the press conference announcing the latest athlete banned for artificially enhanced levels of spunkiness. So far, the roll call this year includes U.S. sprinter Torri Edwards, Irish distance runner Cathal Lombard, U.S. shot-putter Kevin Toth, Greek baseball players A.J. Brack and Derek Nicholson, Swiss cyclist Oscar Camenzind, British cyclist David Millar, U.S. sprinter Kelli White, U.S. middle-distance runner Regina Jacobs, U.S. sprinter Michelle Collins, U.S. hammer thrower John McEwen, British sprinter Dwain Chambers, U.S. sprinter Jerome Young, Mel the pizza guy at the Olympic Village commissary, and Athens 2004 Olympics mascot Phevos, who tested positive for hydrochloro-thiazide. At this point I'm just hoping there's someone left to compete.

While drug tests have come a long way from their humble beginnings (i.e., asking "What did you take, hippie?" and examining urine samples for floating tablets), an arms race is going on between the World Anti-Doping Agency and companies that create designer drugs that can't be detected. The presence of drugs has been an inseparable part of physical training ever since Greek athletes at the ancient Olympics ate sheeps' testicles to raise their testosterone level.

Me, I'm all for it.

I think that in the midst of all the controversies and angry denials we've forgotten the true meaning of the Olympics: to entertain me. To make me sit by the tube, entranced by the sight of perfectly sculpted bodies accomplishing amazing physical feats I couldn't manage in a million years no matter what I took. It's sports porn, I can't get enough of it, and I'm not alone. Was anyone still watching baseball before Mark McGwire's record number of home runs — fueled by who knows what — brought back the crowds?

Today's athletes need performance-enhancing drugs to remain competitive. There's a constant demand for new world records, and Flintstone Chewables just aren't providing the edge they used to. These kids need their tetrahydrogestrinone if they want to win races and attract sponsorship deals, and their audience should demand it.

After all, we've seen people pushing the limits of human endurance, and now we're bored. Can't we move past that now? What if I want to see a javelin-thrower hurl a spear into low Earth orbit? Why can't I watch a man with shoulders so big I can't see his head clean and jerk a Humvee? What do I care if Marion Jones is hopped up on EPO as long as I can watch her run fast enough to pull telephone poles behind her like the Roadrunner?

Obviously this would only be fair if every participant had equal access, but that shouldn't be hard to do. Just bring in some tanker trucks full of meditropin and hose everybody down. And look at the benefits!

– New world records set every day, sometimes involuntarily.

– Pharmaceutical companies could sponsor teams. Openly, I mean. Can't you just see the Pfizer flag flying proudly over the track?

– The excitement of the games themselves would be augmented by the looming possibility of competitors unexpectedly dropping from cerebral hemorrhages mid-game. Let's see bookies handle the odds on that!

– Commentators could update us on the moment-to-moment contents of each athlete's blood, possibly with little onscreen animated charts. "Here comes U. S. decathlete Wilford Hopple now! He's flying on stanozolol with a modafinil chaser, and you can see his veins pulsing all the way from the cheap seats, Jim. There'll be no stopping him today!"

– Eventually we will see a race of genetically-enhanced superbeings, born and bred only to compete for our amusement and pose for Maxim.

Until that happy day, our struggling athletes will have to continue getting by on natural skill and boring old motivation. And, of course, sheep testicles.