The drug tests haven’t been coming back positive so far, so the eyes of the world are searching hungrily for cheaters.

Adorable 9-year-old pixie from the Opening Ceremonies: J’accuse!

The Olympics have produced their own Milli Vanilli scandal with the revelation that Lin Miaoke, the little girl in the red dress who sang a song at the Opening Ceremonies last week actually lip-synced to the voice of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi.

Chinese officials had ordered the switch just before the ceremony, decreeing that the Miaoke, with “flawless” looks, should replace Peiyi, who has a “flawless” voice but crooked teeth. Authorities are unapologetic about the snub of Peiyi — who, it goes without saying, her being a 7-year-old girl and everything, is ridiculously adorable herself.

“The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest,” the Associated Press reported music director Chen Qigang saying. Chen said the switch was requested by a Politburo member. “We had to make that choice. It was fair both for Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi,” the AP said Chen told Beijing Radio. “We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance.”

This was essentially the issue with Milli Vanilli, and all these years later, I still don’t get what was so upsetting about that whole thing. The people behind Milli Vanilli were in the business of putting out music that sounded good and videos that looked good. Why did they have to be made by the same people? If you liked the record when you thought these guys were singing, why don’t you still like it now that you know those guys are?

The real problem there, I get it, was the deception. I guess I’m alone in not needing my singers of pop tunes to be tellers of truth. Singers say “I love you” to me every time I turn on the radio, but it never occurred to me to believe them. They don’t even know me.

If deception is the issue in Beijing — and from the coverage, that’s how it looks to me — it’s not an issue. From Chen’s comments, it sounds like the organizers would have had no problem being up-front about Miaoke not being the actual singer if they’d known it was going to be a big deal. There’s probably more deception involved in the China News Service reports that Peiyi was perfectly fine with the switch than in the switch itself.

The real issue, it seems to me, is a nation-state taking the official position that a 7-year-old girl is too ugly to represent it, and making no bones about that position. That’s pretty disturbing. But it’s not among the most disturbing positions staked out by that particular nation-state.

Yet another cheating mini-scandal also involves the Opening Ceremonies. It was “revealed,” and confirmed by organizers Tuesday, that the fireworks that were supposed to look like giant footsteps marching through Beijing toward the Bird’s Nest stadium were actually computer-generated images.

NBC has taken some flak for not being clear about that. Matt Lauer and Bob Costas mentioned that the fireworks involved “animation,” but they’re being knocked for only hinting at the deception.

Here’s a transcript of what they said, courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter:

Lauer: You’re looking at a cinematic device employed by [Opening Ceremonies director] Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation. A footstep a second, 29 in all, to signify the 29 Olympiads.

Costas: We said earlier that aspects of this Opening Ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic.

I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to man the barricades on this one too. Here’s how clear I thought Lauer and Costas were: My entire storehouse of knowledge about the footsteps fireworks came from their comments quoted above, and the thing that surprised me about Tuesday’s revelations was that there were actual footsteps fireworks in Beijing Friday night.

TV viewers saw the fakes, which also appeared on the stadium’s video screens. But there were real fireworks too. Lauer and Costas led me to believe otherwise. Scoundrels!

The swimming has been thrilling. The gymnastics dramatic. The wide world of Olympic sports have been churning away entertainingly — did you see Great Britain-Pakistan men’s field hockey?

But the cheating scandals have not been up to the high standards of the Olympics thus far. We need a good drug bust.

I have every confidence.

The South Korean city of Pyeongchang was awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics on Wednesday after failing in two previous attempts.

Pyeongchang defeated rivals Munich and Annecy, France, in the first round of a secret ballot of the International Olympic Committee.

Needing 48 votes for victory, Pyeongchang received 63 of the 95 votes cast. Munich received 25 and Annecy seven.

The Koreans had lost narrowly in previous bids for the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.

Pyeongchang will be the first city in Asia outside Japan to host the Winter Games. Japan held the games in Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998.

Olympic gold-medalist Lindsey Vonn has recreated that scene from “Basic Instinct” on the cover of ESPN magazine. And by “that scene” I do mean the one in which Sharon Stone infamously flashed her naughty bits to the world. It’s the magazine’s movie issue — why ESPN has a movie issue, I do not know — and it boasts a bunch of athletes reproducing classic film scenes. The headline accompanying the saucy cover photo is, wait for it, “Back to Basics.” Funny, I thought the magazine’s Body Issue — which came out just a few months ago and features exquisitely athletic naked bodies — was a return to “basics.” But it doesn’t get any more basic, or base, than paying homage to the most famous crotch shot in cinematic history.

London Olympic organizers say a record 5,000 doping tests will be carried out at the 2012 Games.

The local organizing committee has signed a memorandum of understanding with Britain’s anti-doping body and will implement the testing program under the authority of the International Olympic Committee.

London 2012 director of sport Debbie Jevans says the size of the testing program will give a “strong message that drug cheats are not welcome at the London Games.”

UK Anti-Doping will train anti-doping officials and assist them during the event to carry out a 10 percent increase on the 4,500 tests conducted at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Canada’s women’s hockey team has scored quite the controversy by daring to celebrate their win against the U.S. on Thursday by sipping beer, guzzling champagne and smoking cigars on the ice. After the fans filtered out of the stadium, the ladies returned to the rink still in uniform with gold medals draped around their necks. They laid on the ice, poured champagne in each other’s mouths and soaked up the Olympic glory. Their revelry hardly would have garnered any attention, except for one minor detail: there was an Associated Press photographer on hand to capture it all on film.