In May of last year, the Weekend Australian published a list of the 100 most powerful women in the world and placed Anita DeFrantz at number 67, 13 places behind Madonna, and another 44 behind Oprah Winfrey.

Since last month, however, when DeFrantz, who is in Dublin this weekend to speak at the conference on Women in Sport, became the first woman in the history of the Olympic movement to be elected the vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, she might be expected to at least overtake the singer, if not the chat show host, in a newly-compiled top 100.

DeFrantz's elevation to the role of the second in command to the IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, might have troubled Pierre De Coubertin, the founding father of the modern Olympic Movement and the IOC - if he were still alive. "Women have but one task," he once said, "that of the role of crowning the winner with garlands, as was their role in Ancient Greece." After officially opening the conference, organised by the Olympic Council of Ireland, in the Berkeley Court Hotel last night, the 44-year-old American lawyer, who won a bronze medal in rowing in the 1976 Olympic Games, argued that the time had come for the roles of women in sport - both as administrators and participants - to extend far beyond the "crowning of winners with garlands".

She described as "modest" the IOC goal of having at least 10 per cent of all positions in the decision-making structures, and those of all national Olympic committees, reserved for women by the end of the year 2000, rising to 20 per cent by 2005.

"There has, until now, been a de facto segregation of sport so these goals are there to help people understand that there ought to be a threshold level to which they should aspire," she said.

"We want to encourage them not only to open the door; but to invite women in and to remind them that if they are serious about the future of sport, they have to look to involve women in a serious way.

"The number of women involved in sport is miniscule compared to the number of women in the world, so they remain our largest untapped source."

DeFrantz will open the conference today with "an overview of female Olympic participation". She will be followed by Dr Mary Peters, president of the British Athletic Foundation ("Motivating Women to Participate in Administration"), Sue Campbell, chief executive of the Youth Trust ("Women in Coaching Development") and triple Olympic Gold medallist Michelle de Bruin, who will discuss "Achieving Success and Being a Role Model".