The hardest thing about the Olympics these days isn’t to win a single games record eight gold medals, or run the 100-meter dash in a world record 9.69 seconds, or compete as an elite swimmer at the age of 41.

The hardest thing is to believe it’s all true and legitimate. Because we’ve been scarred and hardened, it’s almost impossible to accept any great performance at face value or take anyone at their word.

The object here isn’t to accuse Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt or Dara Torres of doping, or of figuring a new and improved way to skirt drug tests. None of them turned up dirty in Beijing after winning every race he swam (Phelps), running into history (Bolt), or swimming against women barely half her age and dusting all but one (Torres).

But the undeniable fact is it would be foolish to put too much stock in any performance that breaks a barrier or appears superhuman. We’ve been burned so often by our naïveté the past 10 or 15 years that we don’t want to risk looking stupid again, don’t want to hand over our affection and trust only to have them betrayed by an athlete so desperate to win, corners weren’t cut so much as swaths were carved to get to the destination faster.

We’ve learned that everything that looks great initially might not turn out to be so a week, month or year later.

Fairly or unfairly, that’s the price to be paid in the present for the lies of the past. The dopers often have better doctors than the folks who are charged with catching the dopers. So the cheaters keep getting away – maybe not forever, but long enough to taint results.

Phelps says he is clean. Bolt insists he has nothing to hide. Torres says she requested any test that could be administered to detect performance-enhancing drugs be given to her. I want to believe them. I think I can. But I wanted to believe, and thought I could believe, Marion Jones, too.

Remember her? The former Olympic champion and American track queen whose speed only was surpassed by her beauty and commercial appeal.

When rumors initially surfaced that she was dirty – rumors advanced and confirmed by her ex-husband, C.J. Hunter, who was a proven drug cheat – Jones vehemently denied using. When the accusations wouldn’t go away she threatened to sue everybody who dared publicly to say she wasn’t clean. Finally, after she could run no more, she admitted she was lying.

And if Jones was the only one, that would’ve been bad enough. The fact that she’s not, that several other prominent athletes fell before and after her, only makes it harder to have trust. Since every Olympics seems to turn up its share of tainted medalists and participants, we have to wonder if everything is real when performances can be altered so easily.