THERE is a well-known general knowledge teaser which asks anyone to name ten famous Belgians. Instantly any list will bring up the likes of Hercule Poirot (fictional), or the boy wonder detective and adventurer TinTin (again fictional), though his creator Hergé did indeed hail from Belgium.

But even if you include the painter Rene Magritte, actress Audrey Hepburn and one-hit wonder Plastic Bertrand – remember his single Ca Plane Pour Moi during punk’s pogoing pomp – famous Belgian sports-people are a different matter.

Yes, Eddy Merckx is a legendary cyclist, winner of no fewer than five Tour de France titles, while I can also recall long-distance runner Emiel Puttemans.

As the tumbleweed starts to drift across the memory bank, another name springs to mind – Jean Marc Bosman, whose court case revolutionised the football transfer market during the late 1980s.

Any others? Well, it’s a struggle, though in the case of Bosman and a further development this week, it could be argued that Belgian sportsmen are the biggest strops in the world?

Bosman’s challenge to what he perceived to be the iniquitous vagaries of the transfer system a decade ago has this week been followed up by a group of Belgian sports people, including footballers, now objecting to the World Anti-Doping Agency law on requiring to know the whereabouts of athletes they may want to test for drugs.

Under the WADA rules, athletes, including footballers, have to give notice to their ruling bodies as to where they are a month in advance and where they will be during a precise hour every day, enabling testers to come calling.

However, the Belgian block are up in arms at such a policy claiming it to be an infringement of basic human rights and are expected now to mount a challenge to the WADA ruling in the European Courts.

I bet if you went to every sport in the world they would all trot out the platitudes that drugs should not be allowed in any way, shape or form. They would all be sanctimoniously unanimous and nod in agreement that drug-takers should be severely punished. They would all refuse to condone drug cheats and would all stress the paramount necessity of trying to keep their chosen sport free of the contamination of substances which illegally boost performances to the detriment of clean sports men and women.

Yet now there is a challenge to a policy which can only strengthen the commitment to keep drugs out of sport.

If you are a sportsman or sportswoman you are at liberty to do whatever you want in the pursuit of success, glory, cash even.

But if you do something that is illegal, if you opt to take something that is outlawed and affords you an unfair advantage, then WADA is surely at liberty to have every method at their disposal to bring any offender to book.

That unequivocal stance was echoed only this week by Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, the multi-medalled paralympian, who was speaking in the wake of UK Athletics deciding to impose greater fines on athletes who miss drug tests.

She said: “It’s about using every method at our disposal to get people to think about the choices they are making.”

So to those Belgian athletes pondering a legal challenge to what seems an eminent way to curb the influence of drugs in sport, the message is “you cannot have it both ways”.