SOME days I just don't like sport; don't like what it stands for, don't like the way it is played. I'm talking about Lying Lewis, of course. This was that perfect moment we often talk about, when winning just becomes too important.

One of the most interesting men in sport, a former US gridiron coach, Vince Lombardi, once said: "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" Fair enough.

I like competition, like teams and men challenging each other, but if there's no spirit, no respect for the rules, then it defeats the very idea of sport.

In Lombardi's biography, a distinction is made, a very valuable one, about paying the price to win  - sweat, perservance, discipline - and winning at any price.

People will always cheat because its part of the human condition. In sport, either they think they can't get caught or that they're bigger than their sport.

Lewis' lie was astonishing, for I have met him, though only briefly, and he seemed a driven young man but one so sure of his talent, not a man requiring a fiddling with the truth to win or get ahead.

But sport does funny things to people, it turns them, it leads them into a sort of temporary insanity. Lewis is 24, he will learn.

Still, at these times, for reasons you will shortly understand, I remember one man and one statue. The statue is in Melbourne and it is of one man helping another. The helper is John Landy, the helped is Ron Clarke.

If you like running, you will know Landy; if you want to read about Landy, go buy The Perfect Mile, a brilliant retelling of Roger Bannister, Landy and Wes Santee's chase to break the four-minute mile barrier.

Landy ran to win and was clear about that. "Sport's about winning and records," he once said, and was uncomfortable that what he became famous for had nothing really to do with winning. It wasn't about running fast but about slowing down.

In Melbourne's Olympic Park in April 1956, Landy and Clarke were running in the Australian mile championship, when Clarke tripped.

This in itself it was unusual, for in the longer distances runners jostle, shoulders collide, legs entangle, bodies fall. How many times have we seen this? Hicham El Guerrouj fell in the 1500 metres in Atlanta 1996. Mary Decker fell in the 3000 metres in Los Angeles 1984.

Spiking is common, too. In 1996, the 1500m winner, Noureddine Morceli was spiked. Here, Landy, leaping over Clarke, spikes his compatriot in the shoulder as he hurdles over him.

Life is goes on.

And then it happens, for no seemingly explicable reason. Landy, who wants to win, whose life is based on movement, now stops.

In the many retellings of the story by journalists (I wasn't born) and onlookers, Landy goes to Clarke, checks on him, apologises, brushes cinder off him, helps him up, all this of course occuring in a flash of a second or three.

What instinct made him do this? Who knows, maybe not even Landy, but it is remarkable. Writer Harry Gordon, who watched the race and was moved, described it as a "senseless piece of chivalry", a sort of beautiful madness.

Clarke then, reportedly, said to Landy, "I'm all right, run, run". And Landy ran.

And this defies belief really, for in some sort of divine justice, Landy catches the field. He beats the field. He wins.

Of course, a young man who I told the story to yesterday, said in amazement, "he won?". I said, you're missing the point, which is that he stopped.

I am sure this story means different things to different people. Me, I'm just glad that in the time of Hamilton I have this memory of Landy.