Here we are at another World Championship of Athletics, the second-biggest event in what Americans call “track and field”.

And another round of Usain Bolt setting world records? The 100 meters on Sunday and the 200 on August 29?

I still have not come to terms with the records he already has because of the enormous gouges he has made in the best time — in an era when every other man who has run one of the 32 fastest “legal” times in men’s 100-meter history has served a doping suspension.

It was in Berlin in 2009 that Bolt tore 0.11 seconds off his own 100-meter world record, taking it down to 9.58 seconds, I wrote then that I did not believe he had done that “clean”. It called for more credulity than anyone paying attention to the sport should be able to summon.

The last time someone ripped off a chunk of time almost that big in the men’s 100?

When Ben Johnson ran 9.83 at the World Championships in Rome in 1987, 0.10 seconds better than the record — a mark later thrown out, along with the 9.79 he ran at the Seoul Olympics a year later, when he, sensationally, failed a doping test at those Olympics.

Usain Bolt is accorded particular praise because he has never failed a drug test. Just this week he was asked if he represented “good” compared to the “evil” Justin Gatlin, twice busted for banned substances.

Thank goodness, Bolt did not agree with that black-and-white construct.

Then again, he comes from a country, Jamaica, where drug tests have been less than regular, during his career, a country where the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency thought he ought to go look at, earlier this year, presumably to see that they were testing, now and then.

This, after it came out in 2013 that Jamaica had, essentially, not tested any of its sprinters in the half year leading up to the 2012 London Olympics

Here’s the thing about sprinting world records: Any performance that seems too good to be true … probably is too good to be legal.

Athletics and doping are back in the news after reports from leaked tests suggest systematic doping in the sport in this century.

In the post I wrote six years ago, I quoted Carl Lewis, who for a time was eclipsed by the cheater Ben Johnson. Lewis told Sports Illustrated, after Bolt set a world record at Beijing 2008 despite jogging the last 10 meters: “I’m still working with the fact that (Bolt) dropped from 10-flat to 9.6 in one year. … If you don’t question that in a sport that has the reputation it has right now, you’re a fool.”

The world has a lot of fools in it. Some of them even believe Florence Griffith Joyner‘s records in the women’s 100 (10.48) and 200 (21.34), set about 70 days apart, 27 years ago, were on the up and up. Records that remain unbroken and unchallenged (no one better than 10.64 and 21.64) a quarter of a century later.

(If you don’t mind fascinating-but-depressing reading, look at the list of records in women’s athletics. Flo-Jo at the top in the two sprints, but several East German and Soviet records in there, too — two countries strongly associated with doping.)

Some fans prefer to think Usain Bolt is pretty much the only guy who doesn’t cheat, among current elite sprinters: Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell, like Gatlin, all of whom have better times in the 100 this year than does Bolt, have failed doping tests in their careers.

Which is almost cute, that childlike trust.

Remember when cycling’s Lance Armstrong’s most powerful defense was: “I have never failed a drug test”? And then that got sorted out, you may recall.

Bolt’s fans are sticking with that never-failed-a-test line, too. Even though he is the only man, among the five who have recorded the top 32 legal times in history (see the world’s fastest-times list), who has not failed a drug test. Yohan Blake, Gatling, Gay, Powell, all suspended at least once.

So, everyone else cheats, at least some of the time. Bolt, however, never does.

Meanwhile, Bolt’s best time is still .11 seconds faster than anyone else, anywhere has ever run — in a sport where the record typically has come down by one of two hundredths at a time. (See the event’s record progression history.)

And, remember, he comes from a country where, for most of his career, drug testing has been, shall we say, less than rigorous.

It is curious to see the rush to deify Bolt in an era where healthy skepticism should be the default position towards all records — especially performances that trash the previous record.

Those should be met by disbelief.