THE reality of doping is not about millions wiped off the value of your bloodstock, and your reputation destroyed.

It's being wakened at 5am, thousands of miles from home, by a phone call from mum, telling you that you are European 800 metres champion.

That's how it was yesterday for Edinburgh's Lynsey Sharp, who broke down and sobbed. Sharp was runner-up last year to Yelena Arzhakova, who has now been banned for two years for illegally boosting her red cell count.

The 22-year-old Scot was second behind the Russian in Helsinki last year, but is now promoted to gold. She also finished third to the same woman at the European Under-23 Championships the previous year. As a consequence, Sharp is now also promoted to silver.

Her mother, Carol, whom Lynsey overtook in the all-time Scottish rankings less than two years ago, phoned her daughter who is preparing for a race in San Diego this weekend, having just helped a Great Britain relay squad smash a 20-year-old UK record.

"I wanted to spare her from hearing about it on the news or on the athletics grapevine," said Carol. "Lynsey burst into tears. She was distraught, very emotional. She was groggy. I'd just woken her up. Then the emotion gave way to anger."

In Finland, Arzhakova denied her daughter her rightful place on the podium and the adulation which would have accompanied the raising of the Union flag and hearing her national anthem. "It might be the only chance in her life to experience that kind of moment," said mum.

Nothing can replace that podium moment. Or overlooked superlatives: that the European title had eluded the double Olympic champion Kelly Holmes, for example, or that Sharp was the first British winner since the late Lilian Board in 1969.

It's not unknown for such medals to arrive by courier in a Jiffybag, though UK athletics will doubtless try to find something more appropriate when the European Athletics Association forwards the medal. However, as with Jenny Meadows' receipt of European Indoor 800m gold from a BBC pundit – that happened recently when another Russian was exposed – it runs a very poor second best.

Scottishathletics is considering presenting Sharp's gold medal at their annual awards dinner. It's a decent thought, but it might be even more appropriate at Hampden during next year's Commonwealth Games, with a Union flag run up the pole. Could the presentation be made by her mother and father, Cameron, who was European 200m silver medallist 40 years before his daughter stood on the podium?

Such a platform would not only help to headline and retrieve the moment, but would allow Scottish and Commonwealth sport to demonstrate its view on doping.

It would not be inappropriate, either, for UK Athletics to stop inviting Russian athletes to events they promote. Russian athletics has a deplorably ambivalent an attitude to doping. At last year's Moscow Challenge meeting, 11 of the 21 Russian starters in three 800m races had broken two minutes. Another seven had run inside 2:02. If there were any doubt about how this depth is achieved, there was a clue in the number of competitors effusively welcomed back by the announcer "after a lengthy absence": euphemism for a doping ban. All were loudly cheered without hint of criticism or conscience.

Following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, athletics was no more immune from funding cuts than any other sport, yet the president of the Russian Olympic Committee said in London last year that their policy now "resembles the old Soviet system . . . They have actually copied the Soviet system of children's training and so on".

Intensive hot-housing of young talent from age six, in the SDYUSHOR (Specialised Child-Youth Sports School of the Olympic Reserve) was copied by the Chinese but was abandoned by Russia. There it does not now start until mid-teens. This helps account for Russia's relative slide: just three gold medals in the Vancouver Olympics and fourth in London 2012.

Yet, more recently, Russian sport has again become awash. Oligarchs, not known for their moral stance, bankroll sports bodies and offer rewards for success, eg: $500,000 to $1m for Olympic gold last year.

The deputy director of the Moscow State Physical Education and Athletics Agency was accused three years ago of having sought a 5% kick-back on £350m of government funding.

In a climate of political regime-promotion, huge rewards, and improved lifestyles, it would be remarkable if drug use did not increase. Several decades ago, research in the United States found that athletes would dope to win Olympic gold, for no more than the glory, even if the drugs would kill them within a year. How much greater incentive does the motivation of lavish riches provide?

Hence, the NFL and baseball awash with steroids and growth hormone. Ditto road cycling. Big-money sports like tennis and golf are notoriously lax on doping, hence outbursts from the likes of Andy Murray and, on Monday, Greg Norman, who castigated his sport for lack of blood testing.

Some of the biggest rewards in sport are in horse racing. No sooner had the racing fraternity sought to suggest the Godolphin scandal was the iceberg, rather than its tip, but a second Newmarket stable was implicated. It's surprising there's not more doping in high-reward sport. Do vested interests keep it concealed? The bigger the rewards, the greater the cheating.