I’m in the Main Press Center, where most of the regulars have settled in to something vaguely resembling assigned seating. Same folks in the same area, basically, day after day.

And the guys directly across the table from me have been, in recent days, Germans.

So, I’m sitting here, getting oriented after a late night, and two or three of them are reading and laughing.

One guy is reading something aloud in English, laughing, and then commenting in German. This happened once … and then 10 minutes later a Kamerad of theirs showed up, read the same paragraph, and they all laughed again.

I had a feeling it had to do with Usain Bolt, and the 9.69 world record in the 100-meter dash.

And I knew if it were something being read, in English, that generated guffaws … it pretty much had to be the China Daily.

To wit:

“If athletics was looking for a defining moment to get the sport back on track after years of doping scandals, this was it.”

Like, what?

Poor innocent children.  New to the world sports stage, no doubt.

Bolt and his record stink to high heaven.

He is the embodiment of suspicion. A newcomer, with modest history, who bursts on the scene, then rips a chunk out of perhaps the most meaningful record in track and field.

If Florence Griffith-Joyner raised eyebrows, in 1988, when she set records in the 100 and 200 that still stand — after a fairly modest career before that year … well, Bolt should, too.

In fact, the very same could have been written at Sydney, eight years ago, when smiling, handsome Marion Jones was racking up gold medals — if not quite breaking FloJo’s highly suspicious records. “If athletics was looking for a defining moment to get the sport back on track after years of doping scandals [Marion Jones] was it.”

Anyway, the China Daily — an official Chinese government newspaper, remember — managed to generate a happy round of laughs from my German neighbors, who presumably have been around this block before.