SCHOOL sports day, fast approaching for both the eight-year-old at primary school and his big brother at secondary, prompted much discussion around the dinner table this week.

“It’s the cheaters who start in front of the line, without the teachers noticing them, that make me really annoyed,” grumbles the youngest, who is highly competitive.

“It’s not about the winning, it’s about the taking part and enjoying yourself,” says the oldest, who is not.

Their dad, who still complains about the injustice of missing out on a place in the Scottish long-jump schools finals because his PE teacher changed the date of the trials without telling him, is definitely on the side of the eight-year-old.

“It’s not fair on those who try their best and do it properly,” he says. “We have to make an example of them and exclude them from competition and yes, that has to start at school sports days, because if you don't what hope have you got when these kids are older…..”

This is a rant the boys have heard before, but it’s true. A bad experience on the running track, or hockey pitch, or netball court – whether it’s a dismissive teacher who only concentrates on the ‘star pupils’, or losing confidence because a cheat knocks you out of the running – can be enough to put a young person off that particular sport for life.

My own memories of school sports day mainly involve mixed feelings of dread that I'd fall over on the running track and mild surprise when I actually won something (100 metres hurdles, junior girls, circa 1982, ahem).

Cheating in sport is in the news this week too, with the news that up to 31 athletes from six sports could be banned from competing at the Rio Games based on retests of samples from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

That’s all very well and IOC president Thomas Bach is right when he says: "All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win. They show once again that dopers have no place to hide.”

But it doesn’t change the fact that athletes – or swimmers, or tennis players, or cyclists – who cheat to win gold and are subsequently found out, are denying the real winners their powerful, poignant moment in the spotlight.

Standing on the podium, sobbing your heart out as the national anthem plays and the flag rises above your head (or even just getting cheered by your pals in the playground) is one of the best bits about winning a medal.

It’s good to hear, therefore, that any athlete denied a medal at the Olympics in Rio, because of drug cheats, will get their own special awards ceremony at a later date.

Until now, there has been no clear policy about reassigning medals when someone has been stripped of theirs for doping.

It still won’t be quite the same as standing in a packed Olympic stadium, beamed live around the world, but it’s a step in the right direction.