No, not talking NASCAR and its (at the moment named) Sprint Cup.

Talking sprinters. Speed-merchants. Dashers.

Just looking at the sports news on espn.com, and the juxtaposition of these two stories caught my eye.

Usain Bolt runs 9.77 seconds.

Marion Jones gets out of prison.

And the question: How long until Bolt is as discredited and humiliated as Jones has been?

I have no doubt Bolt is doing something illegal. Nobody is that much better than any runner on the planet. Let alone any runner who ever lived.

Bolt ran a 9.77-second 100-meter dash into a strong headwind today in Brussels, and still won with ease.

He did the 9.69 at the Olympics, remember, eased up, goofing — and still two strides ahead of the rest of the World’s Fastest Men.

Well, gee, who else has been that dominant in the past decade or so? Who else won race after race by enormous margins?

Well, there’s Marion Jones, who destroyed the opposition in the 100 and 200 at Sydney in 2000.

Which was run during a time, we later found out, when she was taking “thc clear” — the performance enhancer whipped up by the chemistry whizzes at the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). A bit of news that might never have broken had not the feds been poking around looking for Barry Bonds info.

Bolt may not be nailed as soon as was Maid Marion. Jamaica pretty clearly cares even less about clean athletes than does the U.S., and BALCO honcho Victor Conte already has talked about how infrequently tests are run down there.

But I’m thinking whoever is drugging up the Jamaicans (and Bolt, in particular) probably isn’t as slick or as smart as were Conte & Co., who seemed to have mastered the art of dispensing drugs between tests. And that at one of these Euro events, some random test is going to catch Bolt. And then I’ll try hard not to say “I told you so” in such a way as to be really obnoxious.

One more thought here: The last person, before Bolt and Jones, to rip chunks off of records and dominant the opposition?

Well, that would be Florence Griffith-Joyner, at Seoul, in 1988, whose records in the women’s 100 (10.49) and 200 (21.34) still stand, two decades later. Oh, and like Bolt, she won both the 100 and 200 by outrageous distances — .30 ahead in the 100, .40 ahead in the 200.

Flo-Jo died of mysterious causes at the age of 38. And people just don’t die at 38, in this country. But Flo-Jo did. It doesn’t require particular cynicism to wonder if she was paying a terrible price for obtaining an edge on the opposition, that one fateful season in the sun.

So maybe if the drug-testers don’t catch Usain Bolt, the Grim Reaper might. I’m not rooting for this. I’m just wondering. Those of you still around 10-15 years from now … see how Usain is holding up. And check on Marion, too. Who perhaps was lucky she got nailed and could, presumably, get cleaned up while in federal prison.