AFTER 11 Olympics during which I witnessed the dubious rise of Soviet Union and Russian sport, I have spent recent days appraising the commendable exclusion by the world athletics body of a raft of competitors from the Rio Olympics.

Given state-sponsored doping, one inevitably wonders how many USSR/Russian Olympic performances are tainted by cheating. Cruelly, many honest competitors can't be certain whether they were denied their place in history by a cheat..

Serial offending has been endemic, but identifying the guilty is a legal minefield. Suffice to say, even where definitive proof is absent, widespread grounds for scepticism abound.

The World Anti-Doping Agency's founding president, Richard Pound, chaired the inquiry which led to Russian athletes' exclusion from Rio. He told me of doping's, "deep-seated culture in the Soviet Union" and said this had persisted following the break-up of the USSR. "If you extrapolate that to all the countries of the former Soviet Union, you are getting closer to the situation," he insisted, indicating his belief that doping goes far beyond Russia.

His investigation had no remit to look beyond athletics in that country, but subsequent findings on the Sochi Winter Games prove it was embedded, and state-controlled.

Maskirovka, the Russian military tradition of deception, has indeed spilled into sport.

Perhaps it was best exemplified by Boris Onishchenko who rigged his electronic epee to score hits in the 1976 modern pentathlon. The Soviet Army major, double Olympic and three-times world champion, used a push-button circuit-breaker. This was spotted by the GB captain. "Dis-onishchenko" was disqualified and the UK went on to claim gold.

Sergey Kirdyapkin and Maria Savinova, winners of Olympic gold in London 2012 at 50k walk and 800m respectively, were stripped of their medals for doping. Yelena Arzhakova, who also competed in the London two-lap final, is the athlete whose failed test at the 2012 Europeans meant Scotland's Lynsey Sharp was promoted to gold. Behind Sharp, elevated to silver as a consequence, was another Russian: Irina Maracheva. She has now subsequently tested positive as well.

Motherwell's Yvonne Murray, third in the 1988 Olympic 3000m, was last week denied the silver she should have had since Soviet winner Tatiana Samolenko is a proven cheat. Her husband, Tommy had been campaigning for justice - but don't expect that from the gutless Olympic movement. Scotland's Lee McConnell is another denied an Olympic medal, in the 4 x 400m relay, because the IOC was prepared to tolerate a drug cheat in the US gold-medal squad.

Doping is absolutely the engrained culture suggested by Pound.

Tatyana Kazankina won 800m and 1500m gold in 1976, and successfully defended the latter four years later in Moscow, in Olympic record time.

A month before Montreal the Russian had carved 5.4 seconds from the 1500m world best, first woman under four minutes (3:56.0), beating the world mark by 5.4 seconds. It was the biggest record-breaking margin in the IAAF history of the event.

Kazankina's Montreal 800m gold was in world-record time, and later that year she lowered the 1500m mark again, to 3:52.47 - first woman to run faster than Finnish legend Paavo Nurmi. This remained the world best for 13 years and it is still the European best today.

In 1984 she was suspended for 18 months following refusal to undergo doping control. Kazankina is one of four Russian athletes to have run inside 3min 57sec who have been banned for doping.

The existence of such times in the rankings to this day begs the question why all cheats' perfromances are not completely expunged, rather than left to taunt and tempt future generations. That should also apply to such as the Scottish 400m record of David Jenkins.

Tamara and Irina Press won five Olympic gold medals for the USSR, in 1960 and '64, and set 26 world bests between them. The sisters failed no tests, but speculation was rife when, upon the introduction of gender testing, they promptly ceased competing. They were frequently referred to as the Press Brothers. Were Soviet authorities complcit? We'll never know.

Weightlifting has always been rife with 'roids. Athens gold medallist Denis Berestov was sanctioned in 2006, but Russian lifting's biggest embarrassment was 10 competitors from Beijing in 2008, including medallists, being caught by IOC re-testing. It is effectively an industry. Russian international lifters have being banned for trafficking.

Valeriy Borzov stunned the 1972 Olympics, taking 100 and 200m titles and helping the USSR to relay silver. Last Caucasian to do the double, he failed no test but rumour was reignited in 2003 when Remy Korchemny was implicated in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative scandal which implicated many leading sportsman and women. Korchemny coached Borzov as a schoolboy, and was part of the Soviet coaching team in Munich.

Among the Balco victims was Britain's European 100m champion Dwain Chambers, double World sprint champion Kelli White, Olympic gold and silver medallist Alvin Harrison, Olympic and World gold medallist Chryste Gaines, and world finallist Chris Phillips.

All five of were coached by Korchemny who must have learned his black arts somewhere, raising question over his role while with Borzov.

Russia's proud sports tradition is tarnished beyond re-burnishing. This spells heartbreak for such as double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva, excluded from Rio. The insidious nature of doping is that the innocent are branded with the guilty.

But if performances smell like you-know-what, they probably are.

And another thing. . .

THE book considered the Olympic bible is not being published this year, and its future may be doomed. The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics has been updated every four years since 1984, but will not appear this summer.

It set the Olympic gold-medal standard, giving results of every Games event since 1896, with illuminating analyses and anecdotes - an obligatory reference for commentators and sports enthusiasts.

It was the brainchild of David Wallechinsky who says it's no longer cost-effective. Hinting that resurrection of it and its Winter counterpart may be doomed, he told insidethegames website yesterday that: "the 98-plus new doping positives would have rendered it already out-of-date."

Profound disillusionment seems behind the comment of the US president of the International Society of Olympic Historians: "If I start working on the next Winter Games book, what about the Sochi Games doping? . . . What is the point in my writing about this until it [doping] is all settled?"

That's akin to Wisden or Timeform ceasing publication influenced by cricket match-fixing, or racing corruption.