The debate around Chinese swimmer Sun Yang seems to be whether or not the Australian swimmer Mack Horton was right to snub him by refusing to share the podium or shake his hand.

But there’s a bigger question here: why is Sun Yang still in the pool?

There are no two ways about it. This guy is a drug cheat. He was banned for three months in 2014 for using a banned substance.

Now, he can give any excuse he wants to for that. He can say it had only just been banned, he didn’t know it, he has a heart conditions, it’s all innocent, but that’s just rubbish.

It’s the kind of nonsense you hear from every athlete busted using drugs. They have asthma, they have a headache, their mum gave it them, it was in the chicken they ate on the plane on the way to the competition.

Give me a break. This guy is an athlete. The athletes know the rules, they know when the rules change, they know what they’re doing.

The problem here is that the sporting world gives guys like this another chance. They shouldn’t get one. It should be cut and dry: you do banned drugs, you’re out for life. 

Even on a first offence. Anything short of that is too lenient. It’s not enough of a disincentive., which is why they keep doing it.

A three month ban? You cop a harsher penalty for drink driving in this country.

I’m not sure a ban of a few months is enough to stop drug cheats form cheating again.

Case in point: world champion sprinter Justin Gatlin was banned in 2001, allowed back, banned again in 2005, allowed back, banned again in 2017. Three times!

And here we are again with Sun Yang in trouble. This time, he’s going to face the authorities for smashing a vial on his own blood when the drug testers came around. The reason he did it because he said they hadn’t followed the rules.

Is he guilty? Not sure yet, we’ll find out in a couple of months when he has a hearing. But does that look suspicious?  Yes it does.

The authorities overseeing sports need to harden their rules up. There have been calls for lifetime bans from as high up as Lord Sebastian Coe who runs the International Association of Athletics Federations. Yet it falls on deaf ears.

As Dame Valerie Adams, who has suffered because of drug cheats, says: Once a cheater, always a cheater.