For every athlete who has been caught cheating at the Olympics, how many do you think got away with it? Perhaps we will never have a clear picture of how often foul means have been employed. But with the big event rapidly approaching, sports reporter Adrian Seconi takes a look at some of the worst examples of cheating.
Now be honest. How many of you have been tempted to roll the dice again when no-one is looking?
Even a friendly game of backgammon can get ugly.
Competition can bring out the best and worst in all of us. Some get fed up and give up.
Others train harder than ever before. And a few of us, well, we look for an advantage.
It is innovation if you can find a loophole in the rules, but cheating when fair means turn to foul. And the Olympics has a colourful history when it comes to the latter.
Canadian Ben Johnson is still the poster boy for cheating.
The muscle-bound, jaundiced-looking sprinter broke the world record in the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 in a blistering time of 9.79sec.
Canadians everywhere rejoiced. Critics of the brash Carl Lewis rejoiced.
But delight turned to horror two days later, when Johnson was stripped of the medal and the world record after testing positive for a banned substance.
He had sullied the glory event and went down in Olympic history as its leading villain.
While Johnson initially denied cheating, he later admitted he had been taking steroids since 1981 so he could keep up with everyone else.
The cruel irony is five of the eight athletes in that final either tested positive or were implicated in drug cheating at some point in their careers, including Lewis, who was awarded the gold medal when Johnson was disqualified.
While Johnson is arguably the most reviled of all Olympians, the original sinner may have been a little known athlete from Luxembourg.
Accusations Michel Theato used his knowledge of the Parisian streets to cut a few corners and win gold in the marathon in 1900 were never proved, though.
Four years later, in St Louis, an exhausted Fred Lorz hitched a ride with his manager for 11 long miles.
When the vehicle broke down he continued on foot to the Olympic stadium.
A remarkably fresh-looking Lorz broke the tape and was welcomed as the winner but soon confessed when confused spectators claimed he had not completed the entire race.
His stunt was forgiven and a lifetime ban was lifted in time for him to win the Boston Marathon the following year. A simple apology went a long way, back then.
Most of the early grumbles, though, were directed at the officials, and allegations of corruption and bias have persisted throughout the years.
Ukrainian sisters Tamara and Irina Press won five gold medals between 1960 and 1964 but never shook rumours they injected male hormones to make them stronger or that they were, perhaps, male.
Both stopped competing when gender testing became mandatory in 1966.
There have been other examples but perhaps the most fascinating and tragic is the story of "Stella the Fella".
Polish athlete Stanislawa Walasiewicz, later known as Stella Walsh, won gold in the 100m at Los Angeles in 1932 and silver in Berlin in 1936.
Ironically, she accused American sprinter Helen Stephens, who beat her in Berlin, of being a man.
Stephens was cleared after some crude tests.
Walsh was killed in December in 1980 when she was a bystander during an armed robbery. Ironically, an autopsy revealed she possessed male genitalia but had both male and female chromosomes.
It would be wrong to suggest Walsh was a cheat, and her curious case probably helped pave the way for South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya to compete as a woman.
During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, East Germany helped shift the spotlight from gender determination to drug testing.
The communist nation bathed in Olympic glory but its success was supported by a state-controlled doping programme which supplied performance-enhancing drugs to athletes who, knowingly or unknowingly, were party to cheating on a grand scale.
While there is little doubt East Germany cheated its way to success, proof was not always forthcoming, and most of the records and medals won during that period still stand.
In 2003, Dr Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee's director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, gave documents to Sports Illustrated which revealed about 100 Americans had failed drug tests but were cleared to compete anyway, including 19 medallists from 1988 to 2000.
The cover-up must rank among the worst examples of cheating, along with the 1992 Chinese swimming team and Irish swimmer Michelle Smith's surprising rise from journeyman to triple gold medallist in 1996.
