The 33-year-old Kiwi, who has lived and trained in Kenya since he was 17, said he had been given the banned blood-booster in error after visiting a medical facility for a COVID vaccination.

Robertson, already on for a four-year ban, doubled down - and eventually received a double ban of eight years when documentation he submitted to support his claim was found to have been falsified.

His excuse thus takes its place in a list of similarly unlikely stories from competitors who have tested positive for drugs.

Quiz time. Can you guess which of these excuses were actually made by way of attempted mitigation? Clue - all but one are true…

"I tested positive for testosterone because, the previous night, I had five beers and made love to my wife four times - it being her birthday."

"I have a twin that was never born. That's why my blood contains a different blood-type than my own."

"There were traces of cocaine in my blood because I had drunk some tea which my aunt had prepared for me."

"There were excess testosterone levels in my sample because I had taken a herbal mixture made up by my mother-in-law to increase my fertility."

"Yes, you have found me with the banned substance clenbuterol - but it is for my dog's asthma."

"Although I am in possession of forbidden substances I always carry them around with me but I never use them."

Spotted the odd one out? Yes. It's the last one. Even in a list of stupid stories, who would possibly believe this one?!

Oh sorry.

As you were.

Just checked, and that's true too.

So much for stories that you might think had to be sporting myths, but are in fact true.

The world is full, too, of sporting stories believed or assumed to be true which are, in fact, not.

Usually there is a thread or element in such stories which create a sense of possibility, or even likelihood.

For instance - it has been popularly believed that India did not play at the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil because they objected to being told that, to do so, they would have to wear boots.

At the 1948 Olympics, in what was India's first international competition since gaining independence, most of their players had taken part barefoot although some had worn socks, and they had performed with honour in losing 2-1 to France.

India were effectively automatic qualifiers for the single Asian place available at the 1950 World Cup after Philippines, Indonesia and Burma all withdrew.

When India nevertheless refused to take part in the World Cup, it was widely assumed they were objecting to being given orders with regard to their footwear.

But India's Sports Illustrated magazine ascertained that the All India Football Federation had announced the team would not participate in the World Cup due to disagreements over team selection and insufficient practice time.

Another example, also from the world of football.

Having left Manchester United after his glory years, Denis Law signed up for Manchester City for the 1973-1974 season. In City's last game of the season, against United at Old Trafford, Law scored an 81st-minute backheeled goal to put his side 1-0 up against his old team, who were desperately struggling against relegation, and that goal effectively sealed their fate.

Wrong.

Never has a man looked more miserable to have scored a goal. Law suspected that it would probably be the winner (it was, even though a pitch invasion by desperate United fans ended the match five minutes early) and that it would probably mean his old side went down.

As it turned out, that result was irrelevant to United's fate, as results elsewhere on the final day ensured they would go down to the Second Division whatever the result of their last match.

One of the most potent myths in Olympic history is the story that Jesse Owens, the black sprinter and jumper who won four golds for the United States at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where Nazi propaganda was already portraying Negroes as "black auxiliaries", was snubbed by Adolf Hitler.

In later years, the story was told - and not always discouraged by Owens himself - of how the German Führer had snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand after his victories.

This was not so. Hitler had indeed shaken hands with all the German victors on the first day of competition, and with the three medal winners in the 10,000 metres, who were all from Finland, his future allies in the Second World War.

But Olympic officials then insisted he acknowledge publicly either all the winners or none. Hitler chose the latter course, and so from the second day of competition, when Owens began his Olympics with the 100m heats, there was no question of him being personally greeted by the Führer.

The irony of Owens' historic performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was that the pain he felt came not from his hosts, but his homeland. 

Having been cheered to the echo by the German crowds, who chanted "Yesseh Oh-vens, Yesseh Oh-vens" and mobbed him for autographs, the sharecropper's son from Oakville, Alabama was effectively ignored when he returned to the United States.

He was met by a deafening silence from Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the White House. "Hitler didn't snub me - it was [FDR] who snubbed me," he was quoted as saying in Triumph, Jeremy Schaap's book about the 1936 Games. 

"The President didn't even send me a telegram."