Looking at it from a legal perspective, figure skaters on the way to the Winter Olympics in Turin may find themselves on thin ice and the snowboarding dudes on a slippery slope - the carabinieri [military police] are on the prowl.
With less than three months to the opening ceremony the bizarre prospect of snarling hockey players being led away in handcuffs refuses to go away. Despite what might have been said when it bid for the games, Italy has changed its mind.
It's a host's prerogative, they say. At issue are drugs of the performance-enhancing variety. The International Olympic Committee's position is that athletes who take them are despicable cheats who should be stripped of their medals and sent home under a cloud of humiliation.
Under Italian law, however, it's a criminal offence that carries penalties of up to three years in the slammer. The IOC is still trying to get over the voting scandals of the Salt Lake City Winter games and could well do without seeing images of star athletes behind bars beamed around the world.
Not only did five Olympic athletes test positive for performance-enhancing drugs at the last winter games, but so too did a German Paralympian. Scenes of a disabled skier, for instance, being hauled off for a dose of porridge in a state penitentiary would hardly count as textbook PR for the Olympic movement.
The IOC says that when the Olympic deal was done back in 1999, Italy agreed to drop the doping law, at least for the duration of the games. But now the Italian Senate is just saying no to drug law changes. What's good enough for our athletes is good enough for you lot, they say.