Others in the sport said that they were not surprised that pigeons had been caught doping because pigeon racing has gained in popularity in recent years, becoming a big-money, even a glamorous, endeavor. Last May, a pigeon named Usain Bolt — for the Olympic sprinting champion from Jamaica — was sold to a Chinese businessman for about $430,000.

We can only pretend to know what evils exist within the downy underbelly of pigeon racing, but it could be fun to guess. So let’s make something up:

The identities of the birds who tested positive are not known. Two people briefed on the situation, however, said that pigeons named Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong were under suspicion. The two people did not want their names published because they did not want to be seen as violating pigeon racing’s well-known code of silence, which for decades has kept the sport’s culture of doping out of the public’s eye.

The pigeons, being pigeons, were unavailable for comment. If they could talk, they would almost certainly say that the drug testing — conducted by an overseas lab, after the Belgian drug testers found nothing — was flawed, or that the whole system was flawed. They would claim that the testers were on a witch hunt, or had mishandled their samples. Or that cocaine in your system really doesn’t give you an advantage anyway.

Besides, it was common knowledge in every coop in Belgium that racers were doping. How can it really be cheating when every other top pigeon was doing it, too?

One of the pigeons caught up in the current case — a bird that had used performance-enhancing drugs in the past — was recently tied to a pigeon-doping clinic in Miami. He was suspended with several others for his role in that case, his case went to appeal, and he continued to compete. He was even a starter on his team because, well, the team was lagging and it needed him in the lineup.