The most frustrating aspect of the nearly 40 years I spent in sports journalism was how the blight of doping always lurked in the rear-view mirror.

We sped up, slowed down, turned left, turned right, and we could never shake the druggies. Eventually, we suspected nearly everyone — which was unfortunate because I’m pretty sure not every elite athlete got to where he or she was by cheating.

Aside from the Russians, that is. I’m convinced the Russians were there the day sports doping was invented and never kicked the habit.

And I am pleased, very pleased, that they have been called out by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), which today confirmed allegations of government-sponsored cheating and called for the International Olympic Committee to ban the Russians from the 2016 Summer Games.

I hope the IOC is brave enough to follow Wada’s advice. Losing the Russians wouldn’t assure a clean Rio Games, but it would be a fine and logical place to start.

The specifics of this story pivot on the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, at which the Russians cheated left, right and center to make sure they were atop the medals table on home soil.

The evidence of this was produced mostly by Russians, particularly the former director of that country’s anti-doping lab. Grigory Rodchenkov produced evidence of an astonishing system to replace the tainted urine samples of drugged Russian athletes — many of whom had won medals.

And the revulsion I felt at the whole of it … and my conviction that the Russians have been cheating across the sports for decades … took me back to the 1970s and 1980s.

If you are of a certain age, you may remember the Russians winning more medals at every Olympics — except when their “students”, the East Germans, actually outstripped them in the brilliance of their cheating, winning more gold medals at the 1984 Winter Games.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has taken his country back in the direction of the Communist Era, when a high finish in the Olympic medals table was supposed to be some sort of proof of a superior form of government.

Most cheating, at elite levels in global sport, are about individuals or small groups of athletes who hook up with a renegade sports doctor who has enough skill to beat the system. At least for a while.

Most of these ad hoc cheating systems collapse of their own weight.

What is truly monstrous, and at this moment in time a Russian specialty, is the notion of government-backed cheating.

The Russians need collective punishment to fit their collective commitment to doping, and Wada has given the IOC their opinion of what ought to happen next.

Ban the Russians from Rio. The whole of their team. Athletes, game officials, functionaries.

Let them watch this one on TV and, as kindergarten teachers might say, “let them think about what they did”.