Phonak, the Swiss sponsor of Tour de France winner Floyd Landis' cycling team, is pulling out of the sport after it emerged that Landis had failed a drugs test. And American Olympic 100m champion Justin Gatlin is facing a life ban after testing positive for excessive testosterone, the same substance had turned up in Landis' sample. Gatlin runs for team Nike. With doping scandals hitting the highest echelons of sport, will sponsors balk at the risk of having their brand names sullied by association with sports and competitors who fail drugs tests?
The Landis scandal drags the already drugs-wracked world of cycling - and its greatest competition - into further disrepute. Gatlin's positive test brings the issue of drug cheats straight to the heart of the Olympics' centrepiece sport - athletics - and its blue riband events - the men's 100m sprint.
After seven years of sponsoring cycling, during which time it has weathered several doping scandals, the hearing aid manufacturer will switch its sponsorship budget to music instead.
Phonak's head of communications Stefan Blum told me that the decision to sever its ties with cycling had nothing to do with the Landis situation - or the issue of doping in cycling. It is because the company wants to align itself with events that have more to do with hearing, Blum said.
But less than a fortnight ago, Andy Rihs, founder and chairman of Phonak, told cycling news website Velonews that thanks to cycling his company's brand is recognised the world over, and doping scandals have not "diminished that effect at all".
Rihs went so far as to say that he was glad that doping was an issue in cycling, because it scares off big corporations from becoming sponsors, allowing smaller companies like his to afford to be involved.
And results, according to Rihs, are as important in business as they are in sport: He reminds us of the Festina story. The company had its best revenue ever in 1998 - the year when its team was at the centre of a massive Tour de France doping scandal.
It seems then that all news is good news. But if cycling - doped or not - is so great for Phonak's reputation, why has it decided to quit the sport?
Come next year, iShares, a subsidiary of Barclays Bank, will replace Phonak as sponsors of the cycling team. Will Barclays tolerate the association with doping as long as Phonak has? With public trust in the cycling shattered, doesn't any brand getting involved risk having trust in its products and services eroded as a result?
And what of Nike and its relationship with Gatlin? The global sportswear company, as one of the world's best-known brands, will more easily avoid being tainted by doping scandals, that might hit smaller, less well-known brands like Phonak harder.
At the very least sponsors should take a hard stance against doping, if only to protect their own brands and investment. Sponsorship is such an integral part of sport now that brands who think that all publicity is good publicity, run the risk that they become part of the doping problem itself.
