So it finally turns out that pot-bellied couch potatoes are the healthiest people on Planet Earth. At least this is what the leaked World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) secrets seem to suggest.
A group of hackers which identifies itself as Fancy Bears has been digging into Wada's secret vaults and releasing information about Western athletes allowed by the agency to use banned substances for "therapeutic use".
What has transpired from this data heist is that some of the Olympic champions and sports legends from athletics to tennis and from cycling to gymnastics suffer from very serious illnesses and disorders and require treatments with drugs deemed dangerous for other mortals.
These revelations are shocking, that is if you don't read the American newspapers which have been making extraneous efforts to downplay the gravity of Fancy Bears' discoveries.
Whether one would hate Fancy Bears for busting the long-cherished myths that to excel in sports, one has to be extraordinarily fit and that all honours in sports are won fair and square would depend on which side of the fence you sit.
Experts and media from the West have been vocally rejecting Fancy Bears' mission to reveal the "dirty methods" by which some athletes win their medals.
The hackers have so far published records of more than 60 athletes from 15 countries, with the athletes from the United States and Britain accounting for over half of them.
Names of American gymnast Simone Biles and tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, Britain's long-distance runner Mo Farah and Olympic golf gold medallist Justin Rose and even Spanish tennis legend Rafael Nadal appear on the list.
To many, it may look like just another isolated skirmish in an epic war for sporting supremacy waged between the West and the Russians, in which one can't help but feel sympathetic to the Russians.
However, chances are that it could be more than just a simple squabble because the Wada has dogged the Russians with such an ardency that has often smacked of a political vendetta to say the least.
In the wake of Wada's unrelenting insistence, the International Olympic Committee found itself trapped in a situation which left the IOC with only a couple of possible escape routes, one of them being banning a large number of Russian athletes from participating in last month's 2016 Rio Olympics on suspicion of doping.
The IOC dodged an international condemnation -- and baulked on its opportunity to earn some praise in the West at the same time -- by transferring the onus of making the decision to the international governing bodies of each sport.
The move did lead to a big-scale cull of the Russian athletes and the Wada got what it wanted, but only to an extent though.
Then came the much-criticised decision by the International Paralympic Committee to impose a blanket ban on the former communist country, denying its disabled athletes a chance to compete in the Rio Paralympics, which ended last Sunday.
Some people might argue that there is no point in reviving the Cold War-type sentiments on a different battlefield, but the hypocrisy of the West and Wada exposed by Fancy Bears at least deserves a thorough probe.
Russian poster girl and former tennis world No.1 Maria Sharapova tested positive for taking a prohibited drug at this year's Australian Open in January and was subsequently banned for two years.
Fine enough. Justice done.
However, while adding his voice to the loud chorus seeking a ban on 'Sugarpova', the 14-time Grand Slam winner Nadal was quoted as saying by AFP in March this year: "I have never had the temptation of doing something wrong. I am very far from that, doping.
"I am a completely clean guy. I worked so hard during my career that when I get injured I never take nothing [banned] to be back quicker."
Dear Mr Nadal, your record at the Wada seems to imply something different, sir.
The intention is not to square the blame on athletes alone as there may be quite a good number of genuine cases as well. It is rather to point out that the Wada is indeed a failed organisation.
The stakes are getting higher in every sport and preposterous amounts are being offered in prize money. One can only expect the athletes to exploit any available legal loopholes to gain edge on the others and the TUE (therapeutic use exemption) serves their purpose very well.
If the Wada says that it never knew that TUE will one day be exploited in such a manner, then it is one of the most incompetent bodies ever put together and should be confined to history -- yesterday.
And a TUE isn't the only route available to the athletes.
Shortly before the start of Rio Games, Thai badminton star Ratchanok Intanon walked scot free after testing positive for a banned substance in May this year.
The Badminton World Federation (BWF) absolved Ratchanok of any wrongdoing because the route of administration of the substance was intra‐tendinousm which isn't specifically prohibited by the Wada.
It is this behaviour that led Russian President Vladimir Putin to say: "It seems as if healthy athletes are taking drugs legally that are prohibited for others, and people who are clearly suffering from serious illnesses, major disabilities, are suspected of taking some kind of substances and banned from the Paralympic Games."
Instead of coming up with a satisfactory answer to why a therapeutic use exemption can be given to athletes from certain countries and not to those from the others, the Wada has been wasting its efforts on trying to convince everyone that the hackers called Fancy Bears have Russian links.
Everything suggests that the problem is with the Wada itself.
Wada president Sir Craig Reedie, who is also an IOC vice president, admitted at the Rio Games: "I would like to think not all the system is broken, that part of the system is broken, and we should start to identify those parts that need full attention."
The Wada, besides being hypocrite, has shown a gross lack of transparency and competency and now its credibility is being questioned as well.
The Wada's lack of transparency has also cast a dark shadow on the integrity of sports events across the globe as there are more than 1,300 athletes who enjoy the TUE at the moment.
Sir Craig has the right to feel that the Wada is only partially broken, but its performance over the past few months indicates that the sputtering organisation is in fact broken beyond repair.
We were all promised clean Games in Rio de Janeiro. Instead we saw quite a few registered dopers walk away with the gold medals. Isn't this a reason enough to the slam the door shut on Wada and replace it with an altogether different organisation with a different mindset?