Some of the current world records in track and field were set with pharmaceutical assistance; some of that pharmaceutical assistance came from drugs that are deemed to be “performance-enhancing” and therefore against the rules. Some of those records were set in particularly lawless eras with regards to drug testing, like the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, or 2010s. In response to the latest revelation that drug testing is a PR scam that has nothing to do with competitive balance in sports--that the IAAF was taking bribes from Russia to cover up positive tests--UK Athletics has suggested that (the royal) we reset all of the world records in track and field.

Declaring by edict that the past didn’t happen is a sure sign that an organization has no control over its present or future. Whether you’re the NCAA or the Turkish parliament, striking events from the history books is an admission that your best solution for dealing with a bad thing that happened is pretending that it never happened.

Actually, that’s not quite fair to UK Athletics. In addition to suggesting an Orwellian deletion of history, they’ve also suggested lifetime bans for drug cheats. If those bans ever get enacted--which is perhaps giving this glorified fan fiction too much credit--UKA won’t have to look too far for legal counsel when they’re inevitably challenged in court. The Court of Arbitration for Sport gently reminded the British Olympic Association in 2012 that banishing someone from a profession for life is blatantly illegal.

Back to the idea of resetting the world records, which is on its face so breathtakingly stupid and naïve that it makes you wonder if something more nefarious might be lying under the surface. Quickly: resetting the world records clock to year 1 Anno Coe would imply that the same sport that is perhaps its all-time dirtiest era (with close competition from every era ever) at this exact moment can suddenly be trusted to have clean competitors.

2015 Genzebe Dibaba? That world record was set under the auspices of a corrupt and incompetent IAAF, and to level the playing field, this world record should be tossed out with all of the others. But 2016 Genzebe Dibaba? Competing in the post-cheating era, and we welcome her newly bestowed righteousness.

Of course, UK Athletics knows that this is self-evidently ridiculous, and that world records set by athletes above reproach like Dibaba, Paula Radcliffe (...), Usain Bolt (......), and Hicham El Guerrouj (...................) will never get stricken from the internet books.

UKA doesn’t want that to happen, either. But they do want Seb Coe to look good. By making this ridiculous proposal, they can set up Coe to say “Unlike my British compatriots, I don’t want to strike all of the world records--just the ones set by people that we’ve arbitrarily agreed were cheaters, particularly Eastern European women.” In fact, Coe already allegedly told the head of UKA that “he is in favor of picking off those records that are clearly wrong.”

And it’s much easier for Coe to say that in the face of a proposal to wipe the record books entirely clean. That way, Coe can position himself as both the shining knight defending purportedly clean athletes, and the tough cop cracking down on purportedly dirty ones.

Don’t fall for it.