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in a thrilling display at the Bird's Nest. The Moroccan-born star waited patiently on the shoulder of Kenya's before powering home from 200m out to win in fine style and earn his adopted country its first ever Olympic medal.

Or so we thought.

It seems that finishing burst might have had something to do with the extra oxygen reaching his tiring muscles thanks to the banned drug Cera.

For those of you who prefer to take your sport without a chemistry degree allow me to explain, and don't panic, I've got an arts degree.

Cera, or to its mother, is a newish version of synthetic EPO, the naturally-occurring hormone that regulates the production of red blood cells.

Intended for the treatment of anaemia and kidney problems, synthetic EPO is a temptation for endurance athletes because red blood cells carry oxygen around the body. They also play a part in the healing process.

Cera is a particular temptation because it lasts longer - and therefore doesn't need to be administered so often - than earlier versions of EPO. There was also a belief that it was undetectable. Ha!

Hopefully, Kiprop will receive his gold medal very soon. It won't be quite the same, though, as getting it on the podium in Beijing whilst his national anthem plays, the crowd applauds and the cameras beam his smiling face around the globe.

That's an experience you can't return in the post but Kiprop won't be the only one wondering about the moments Ramzi has stolen.

Whilst the 28-year-old's victory in Beijing was a slight turn-up for the books in terms of recent form, Ramzi had previous at major championships.

Three years before at the in Helsinki, Ramzi became the first man to complete the at a major event since the great did it at the 1964 Olympics. Ramzi would also claim a 1500m silver at the 2007 Worlds. Begs the question, doesn't it?

Rebellin, who claimed the silver medal in , is another who has enjoyed a glittering career in his chosen field.

A relative lack of success in the Grand Tours means the 37-year-old might not be so well known to the general sports fan, but "Tintin" is a pretty big name in professional cycling.

that populate the calendar between the big stage races, Rebellin recently claimed his third win in the prestigious race in Belgium.

That should be the last of his victories, though, as he too has been caught with his hand in the Cera jar.

As well as Ramzi and Rebellin, there were four others caught by the IOC's retrospective action: Dominican weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras, Croatian runner Vanja Perisic, German cyclist Stefan Schumacher and Athanasia Tsoumeleka, a walker from Greece.

Seeing Schumacher amongst this company was hardly a massive surprise as he has just been handed by cycling's governing body for failing a drugs test during the .

He won two time trials during that race, and , but we can hopefully say we have now seen the last of him in a professional peloton.

Little is known or remembered of Contreras and Perisic, but .

I should at this stage point out that it is only the "A samples" of these six that have been tested. All can ask for their "B samples" - a smaller sample used for confirming positives - to be tested and all will no doubt make this request.

Off the top of my head I can only think of two occasions when a B sample has not supported the first analysis and that involved and . Jones's luck would eventually run out and Mayo's reprieve was similarly temporary.

Mistakes can happen, though, and I will be the first to apologise for unfairly assuming the guilt of the "Cera Six". It is not, however, an apology I expect to make.

So what has this episode taught us about doping and elite sport? Is the amount of cheating up or down? Is this the end of Beijing story?

Those are three good questions and I don't know the answer to any of them.

What I can say is that the at an Olympics, nearly 5,000 of them. These tests were also of a higher quality and better targeted.

The six fails this week takes the overall doper count for the Games to 15 (if you exclude , who were up to all sorts of mischief).

Given that there were 10,000 competitors in Beijing, this doesn't sound like a catastrophe, although the sport of athletics, with seven doping cases, will know its integrity remains under serious threat.

But even the most optimistic IOC official will know this doesn't mean all the bad guys were caught.

It might mean, however, that a few more cheats have been found out than in the past. And more importantly, it might mean a few seeds of doubt have been planted in the minds of those tempted to cheat.

That is the real effect of retrospective testing. By keeping samples for eight years (although it should really be longer) the deterrent factor rises exponentially. Dopers might be ahead of the testers now but are they eight years in front?

We can all be cynical about the effectiveness of drugs testing and the chances of ever really cleaning sport up - we've been lied to too many times.

But I think the situation is improving and while the falls from grace of Ramzi and Rebellin lack the immediate drama of , they could have more resonance.

You might have fooled us once but don't count on fooling us forever.