If anyone reading this column still believes in the “Olympic ideal,” please give me a call: I’ve got a stadium in Rio de Janeiro I’d like to sell you.

Discredited long ago by the very corruption and nationalism they were originally meant to transcend, the Olympic Games are embroiled in a wave of scandal that’s embarrassing even by the sorry standards of this hypocritical “movement.”

It’s hard to say what’s more outrageous: credible new allegations of a clandestine state-sponsored doping scheme carried out by the 2014 Winter Olympics’ host nation, Russia — or the fact that the International Olympic Committee entrusted the event to a despotic regime run by a glory-hungry former KGB agent in the first place.

Meanwhile, the integrity of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing — another dictatorship’s showcase — has been retrospectively undercut by the discovery of previously undetected doping by a reported 31 athletes from 12 countries; similar findings may be about to taint the 2012 London Games.