But Sotomayor, immensely popular in his home country and viewed by President Fidel Castro's government as a hero of its socialist sports system, was cleared of any wrongdoing by his national federation.

Sotomayor is revered in Cuba

Castro personally defended Sotomayor, calling him one of the "glories" of the nation who was the victim of bungled laboratory techniques and a probable plot by anti-Communist foes abroad.

Sotomayor's ban was controversially halved by the IAAF, which meant he was free to compete from 31 July 2000 - just in time for the Olympics.

Despite protests from fellow competitors and Dick Pound, the head of the IOC anti-doping agency, he went to Sydney and came away with silver.

Now he is back on Canadian soil, aiming for his fifth world title against a background of whispers from that previous visit - and sniggers from local wags about being the man who put the "high" into high jumping.

Golden great

But, by any reckoning, he is the greatest athlete in the history of the discipline.

World record holder with 2.45m, he has cleared 2.30m or better at a staggering 227 meets. But at 33 years of age, he may not be the same near-impregnable force of old.

A troublesome Achilles tendon threatens to spoil his record of never finishing worse than second in the five World Championships since Tokyo in 1991.

His best this season is 2.30m. Only once in World Championship history has the event been won with a leap of less than 2.35m.

Sotomayor finished a lowly fifth at the World Indoors in March and has shown little sign of improvement since then.

His sole reason for optimism is the desultory form of his rivals.

Reigning Olympic champion Sergei Klyugin has managed just 2.31m, which has done little to dispel the notion that he only won his title in Sydney through meteorological fluke.

Sotomayor won gold in Athens in 1997

Klyugin cleared 2.35m in the dry, then sat back and watched as the heavens opened and his rivals struggled in vain.

The Ukrainian pair of Andriy Sokolovskyy and Sergiy Dymchenko have looked relatively dangerous.

But comedians everywhere were disappointed when American Nathan Leeper failed to live up to his name and make it through qualifying to the final.

But it is Sotomayor on whom all eyes will be trained.

Realistically this is his final joust at a title he made his own over the previous decade.

The old legs will almost certainly give out before the next Olympics come round in Athens in three years time.

It is almost unheard of for a high jumper to last this long. The event is dreadfully hard on the body, and most jumpers have flipped their last Fosbury Flop before the age of 30.

Whether the greatest of them all can beat time as well as the best in the world remains to be seen.