IF THE summer of 2016 was one of British sporting triumph, the autumn is becoming one of scandal and suspicion. Britons barely had time to celebrate Team GB’s performance in Rio de Janeiro, where it finished second in the medal table in both the Olympic and Paralympic games, before receiving embarrassing news.

On September 27th “Big Sam” Allardyce, the recently appointed manager of the mediocre but beloved England football team, offered his resignation to the Football Association (FA) just 67 days into the job, after the Daily Telegraph newspaper published footage of him explaining how to circumvent FA rules to undercover reporters. Meanwhile Sir Bradley Wiggins, a cyclist who has won more Olympic medals than any other Briton, was defending himself against allegations of doping. Drug-testing records leaked by hackers on September 15th showed that Sir Bradley had in the past received medical exemptions to treat his asthma with steroids that are normally banned.

Both cases are tinged with hubris. The FA has long styled itself as a champion of footballing integrity. It was critical of FIFA, the sport’s international governing body, in the years before evidence of fraud committed by FIFA officials emerged in 2015. Earlier this week an FA-funded body criticised FIFA’s decision to drop an anti-racism task force. The FA was six years ahead of FIFA in outlawing third-party ownership of footballers’ rights, under which businesses could buy a player’s economic rights and sell his labour to a team. Mr Allardyce was recorded describing the FA’s ban as “ridiculous” and explaining various loopholes in the rules to reporters who were pretending to represent an Asian investment company, with whom he discussed a £400,000 ($520,000) fee.

Team Sky, the British-run cycling outfit in whose colours Sir Bradley won the Tour de France in 2012, has also portrayed itself as a pillar of probity. It has a “zero tolerance” policy on employing past cheats and has promised to clean up cycling, a sport long associated with doping. Sir Dave Brailsford, who runs the team, was also until 2014 in charge of British Cycling, which has notched up 22 Olympic gold medals in the past decade, nearly one-third of Team GB’s total. He has explained that Team Sky and Sir Bradley acted within the rules to gain permission from the UCI, cycling’s international administrative body, to treat his asthma with injections of triamcinolone acetonide between 2011 and 2013.

That steroid does indeed alleviate asthma; it also has a history of abuse in cycling, since it burns fat and reduces pain, according to Ross Tucker, a sports scientist at the University of the Free State in South Africa. Lance Armstrong, a disgraced American former champion, tested positive for it in 1999, before covering his tracks with a backdated permission for a saddle-sore cream containing the substance. There is no suggestion that Sir Bradley or his team have broken the rules. But his use of the drug appears to contradict the claim made in his autobiography in 2012 that, vaccinations aside, “I’ve never had an injection”.

The affair threatens to tarnish Britain’s glittering Olympic success. As for the England football team, it is more than ever a “laughing stock”, in the words of Alan Shearer, a former captain. Under Mr Allardyce’s predecessor, its squad of millionaires was recently beaten by Iceland, a country whose entire population could fit inside four stadiums. Mr Allardyce can at least claim an unbeaten record: his career in charge lasted for only one game.