In the end they all stood ramrod straight like so many old Eastern Bloc leaders as they unveiled a great dam with a huge, leaking crack in it. They expected everyone to applaud even as they were getting splashed.

The Lausanne Declaration, the fissured edifice constructed from three days of speechifying and infighting in the Palais de Beaulieu, was crumbling even as its engineers withdrew yesterday.

There was nothing in this week's work which one good lawyer couldn't undo in a day, and the body language of the departing draftspersons suggested they knew that. The creation of an independent, anti-doping world body, still to be christened and staffed, was a welcome move, even if the bloodiest fighting has yet to be done. The decision to exempt certain sports federations from something as basic as uniform sanctions for like offences hobbled the new arrival before its first stride.

The rationalisations for the mess veered towards the obscure. They all but took a census of angels dancing on the tip of a needle.

"A 15-year-old taking drugs is different from a 30-year-old who tests positive," said Juan Antonio Samaranch. "The 15-year-old may be influenced and manipulated by the entourage."

Which will be all the more likely if being influenced by the entourage is to be regarded as a circumstance qualifying the offence as an exception to the two-year sanction. And what about a 17-year-old or a 19-year-old or a Paul Gascoigne? All that, however, is for the future and for the lawyers. It has been a bad week for Samaranch, and his doddery grasping for some justification for the "exception rule" was in keeping with a lacklustre performance on all manner of issues. He finished the week with a press conference in one of the large theatres within the complex and was markedly defensive throughout.

He seemed shaken by the ferocity of the opening day attacks on him, an assault which was led by former army man Barry McCaffrey who is in charge of White House drug policy. Even yesterday Samaranch was still confused and reeling.

"We listened with a lot of interest to General McArthur (sic)," Samaranch said, "but we told him he also has problems in his own country with doping. I think after this week our movement is not weaker, it is stronger."

Not many felt the same. Samaranch's position has weakened considerably in the past few days. Where once he would have been nimble in dealing with criticism in this sort of forum, this week he was clumsy. He lost all chance of annexing the high moral ground early in the week, and by the end was suffering sniper fire from behind as the IOC began to revolt against reform. His own medical commissioner, Alexandre de Merode, accused Samaranch of having set the fight against drugs back by a decade when he scotched the idea of an independent agency in the late 1980s. There is an outside chance that Samaranch's reign might come to an end in Lausanne next month when the IOC reconvenes in order to discuss its own reforms. It is more likely, though, that he will teeter on till his 80th birthday in two years, when he intends to step aside. Meanwhile, the old fascist holds us all hostage.