Though cheats will be back in the Olympic arena this summer, wisdom survived the USOC challenge to the IOC's Osaka Rule that bans athletes convicted of serious doping offences from competing in the next Olympic Games: the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will reintroduce the measure by placing it in a revamped Code.

"Rule 45" in the IOC book was challenged last year by the United States Olympic Committee on behalf of LaShawn Merritt, the 2008 Olympic 400m track champion banned in October 2010 for 21 months after testing positive for a banned a substance contained in a product design to make enhance the size of penis.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) agreed that it was unfair because to ban him from the Games was tantamount to a second punishment for the same offence. The result was clear: a whole wave of people booted out of sport for serious doping offences could now return to the Olympic arena. 

The British Olympic Association challenged a ruling that indicated that it could no longer set its own national selection criteria when choosing teams: the rule 45 pronouncement meant that Britain was unable to block those who had cheated from returning to what for many is the ultimate sporting arena. The BOA lost and, against the wishes of a vast majority of British athletes heading for London 2012, must select athletes once banned at the hard end of cheating if they make the grade on all other criteria.

However, at the time of its ruling, CAS indicated that Rule 45 could be reintroduced if it was included as part of the WADA code.

A new clause in the draft code - 10.15, Limitation on Participation in the Olympic Games - declares that in serious doping cases "as an additional sanction, the athlete or other person shall be ineligible to participate in the next Summer Olympic Games and the next Winter Olympic Games taking place after the end of the period of ineligibility otherwise imposed."

The move has been made so that it is unnecessary for bodies such as the BOA to seek sanctions against their athletes beyond the Code.

WADA notes state: "The Code's objective of harmonisation would be seriously undermined if multiple Anti-Doping Organisations were each allowed to impose their own anti-doping participation rules. The balance has been struck to provide for a special sanction limiting participation in the Olympic Games. This article is consistent with the CAS decisions in USOC v. IOC (the Merritt case) and British Olympic Association (BOA) v. World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).''

The new code is due to be approved in autumn 2013 and would come into force in 2015 in time for Rio 2016, making London 2012 the one Games at which the Merritt ruling may serve as a charter for serious cheats to return to the Olympic arena.

The farce of it all is highlighted in an insidethegames comment piece by leading British sports writer Mike Rowbottom.

Writes Rowbottom: "The proposed WADA ruling is curiously similar to the position held since 1992 by the British Olympic Association (BOA), whereby serious doping offenders were prevented through a bye-law put together and implemented by athletes from ever competing for Britain again at an Olympics."

Quite. Much money and lawyers' time and wasted time under the bridge.