Thirty years in The Fight Against Doping chirps the fliers for next week's IOC-sponsored World Conference on Doping in Lausanne. Thirty years. They arrived so late and so short-handed that the logo might as well read Thirty Years Shutting Doors after Horses Have Bolted.

The IOC and sports people from around the world will roll their sleeves up and get down to business in Lausanne on Tuesday, addressing a scandal which far outweighs the bribery issue which has dogged the Olympic movement in the past month. Drug taking, the tolerance of it and the persuasiveness of it, represents a far greater attack on the ethics of sport than the misdeeds of light-fingered administrators. The IOC members, battered and dizzy from their turn in the stockades of public opinion, might wish that misdemeanours were explained away as easily as they are on the track. Dennis Mitchell, the American sprinter, just beat the rap on a positive testosterone case by contending that his high testosterone levels were down to too much drink and sex. He had been nowhere near the Salt Lake City bidding committee the night before.

Mitchell's case as it unfolded last year following a drug test in Florida last April seemed to put the tin hat on what had been a disastrous year for sports public relations flunkies. The World Swimming Championships and the Tour de France had disintegrated in front of the world's cameras. Michelle de Bruin, the most controversial Olympian of 1996, spent the year in the dock.

Then Mitchell, a former chair of the US track and Field Athletes Advisory Committee, turned in a positive test which in December was overturned by his own governing body, which quietly accepted his explanation that he indulged in too much beer and sex the night before. No explanation was issued for the decision at the time. The IAAF announced soon afterwards that it would be investigating the US authorities' decision on both the Mitchell case and the Mary Slaney case.

The Mitchell business caused ripples of laughter among a sporting public which as seldom sees the kernel of idealism which is at the heart of sport as it does the idealism at the centre of politics. Yet Mitchell contributed one last straw of cynicism to the creaking back of the camel.

Everything which is wrong with sport's approach to policing itself was on view somewhere last year. The Mitchell story merely compiled all the best bits. Stuttering authorities acting in discordant secrecy against a chorus line of athlete stars who have all the rewards, all the incentives, and all the swish lawyers on their side.

"The integrity of sport is at stake," says John Treacy, who will represent the Irish state as head of the Sports Council next week. "There are fundamentals which we have to get right quickly. Co-ordination of funding is a start. That would be a major step forward. Funding the research. Then there is education, working together."

Sport is enslaved by the colossal arrogance of its preening stars, by its servitude to the paymasters of television and corporate sponsorship, by its desire to be a sweaty, real-life version of Hollywood and by its crippling fear of litigation. And it is all policed by quaint anachronisms like the International Olympic Committee.

When the delegates and the IOC get together in Lausanne on Tuesday they will have to strip back the soft-focus layer of make-believe and reassess sport from the top down. They are fortunate, perhaps, that the opportunity comes at a time when the IOC is on its knees. One of the first things which the fight against doping needs is strong and independent leadership.

"One of the key things next week is looking at the new phase of the drug-testing era," says Staffan Sahlstrom, head of IDTM, the world's leading dope testing agency.

"A lot of federations we are working with are looking to a new sort of programme where they have an independent agency looking after drugs. Depending on the outcome, if there could be a group or board or agency with the authority to conduct tests in and out of competition, that would be a good thing. It would have the authority to work worldwide and to co-ordinate the approaches of different bodies."

Sahlstrom's point is underlined by the fragmented approach within the Olympics itself. Despite the urging of various IOC commissions, just 10 out of 34 Olympic sports federations conduct out-of-competition dope testing. Then there are other problems.

"I think it would be interesting to talk about American professional sports," says Sahlstrom. "The National Hockey league, baseball and NBA especially. I haven't heard anything on whether there is agreement from them on this sort of package. How will those professionals be involved in the testing and rules and sanctions?

"Will the rules be the same for hockey and baseball and basketball if they are to compete at the Olympics? How are these stars to be tested out of competition."

If those kinks can be worked out, there is a broad welcome for the idea of a large, independent agency which can effectively separate sport's policing function from its judicial function.

Sport is, at present, confused on all sorts of issues, even by the role of arbitration in drugs cases. For instance, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), the governing body of athletics, does not allow athletes to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne (CAS). These things need codifying.

"I believe the agency needs to work close together with agencies like ourselves (IDTM) and some of the national agencies," says Sahlstrom. "One of the problems now is that IOC agencies will accept all kind of processes conducted by national operators. The standard must be internationally high. We cannot have different standards. Everyone with a national testing activity reckons his is the best. We must have the same standard everywhere."

John Treacy concurs. The overweening need for sport at the moment is for unity and a transparent form of independence.

"I think we will emerge with some sort of independent body responsible for drug policy worldwide. There will be a lot of politics going on, though, for the IOC to divorce itself from that. Certainly in the European context we have been looking at having a better, co-ordinated approach. We had a meeting of the ministers concerned in Berne before Christmas, so that they could emerge with a unified approach before Lausanne."

The emergence of a new body should be but one of the good intentions taken up by delegates in Lausanne. Next week's conference revolves around four broad themes, drawing contributions and discussion documents from a wide range of contributors.

One strand of discussion will focus on the Protection of Athletes, an area which includes not just modern concepts like lawyering up and not getting ripped of by your dealer, but which looks at aspects like prevention and the almost antiquated notion of protecting the health and well-being of clean athletes against the creeping culture of cheating and looking at defining the responsibilities of athletes to their own ethical codes.

Secondly, the conference will look at the legal and political aspects of the problem. Topically, given the thrust of several high-profile cases, there will be discussion of the question of burden of proof in doping cases. After a report of a prohibited substance, it is a reflex of the athlete or team to suggest that there is doubt as to the reliability of the findings, laboratories and testers and most appeals are hinging on this area.

The grey subject of intent or negligence of the athlete (that is, the liability where drugs are taken unintentionally) has also to be addressed. The key here is working toward a single medical code and the elimination of the many systems of sanctions currently in operation.

The two final strands pitch the conference towards the horizon of solutions. Strand Three is Prevention: Ethics education and communication, while strand four, chaired by Dick Pound of the IOC, tackles financial considerations.

The recognition of the broader issues which doping in sport raises will be evidenced by the presence in Lausanne of Barry McCaffrey, director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy. McCaffrey usually works a darker side of the street, but in recent times the definition of drug control has been broadened.

McCaffrey told journalists this week that his office had become involved because "there was a growing sense among American athletes that chemical engineering by athletes was destroying sport, and a corresponding concern among children who are wondering `do I have to use steroids or testosterone or EPO in order to compete'."

The White House received a request from the IOC for direct input into the doping issue last autumn when storm cloud after storm cloud of drug scandals broke over the sports world.

An initial pledge from the US government last November included $1 million in state funds to develop advanced drug testing. Steffan Sahlstrom of IDTM reckons that the funding situation will improve, but we are still some time away from having a built-in levy of TV and sponsorship money automatically channelled to laboratory research.

"Testing for EPO and growth hormone should be on a priority list. Twenty-five million dollars was the sum mentioned at the preliminary IOC meeting on November 27th last. I think minds are focused a bit better. Something like that would be a huge part of what is needed. It would go some way to the development of the science."

Dr Don Catlin of UCLA, the world's leading researcher on matters related to doping, expresses his frustration with the funding system and recognition of his chosen vocation.

"On the global level our research tends to be piecemeal at present. Somebody works up an idea for a research project and then goes out and gets funding for that idea. We have no centralised direction of what areas we need to work on and no reliable source of funds. It is one of the less glamorous areas of the science world, standing fiddling with urine samples all day long."

John Treacy is hopeful that the world body will make strides on the issue which has crippled the sport he graced for so many years.

"In Ireland we need to educate. One of the main themes next week is education and in the Irish context we will be looking this year at launching programmes which emphasise the ethos of sport again. We heard a lot in Ireland before Christmas about creatine being given to schoolboy teams. It doesn't really matter what your view is about whether creatine is legal or not, it sets the wrong ethos for sport. Coaches have a fundamental part to play and we will also be targeting national governing bodies and athletes themselves. We have to re-establish this old-fashioned idea of sport being about ethics."

Treacy hopes that, as well as doing some spring cleaning at home, Ireland will become a nett contributor to the global fight against doping.

"I would like to see us becoming involved in research. In the Irish context we have an amount of money which we have set aside for research, the amount will depend on the specific project, but a co-ordinated approach to that issue would be a major step forward and we would be keen to be involved. We have been talking to anti-doping agencies around Europe sounding out joint ventures."

For the Irish it will be a learning expedition as the country attempts to heal its bruised innocence on the matter of big-time sports cheating. For other countries the debate is more advanced.

The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport will discuss their Spirit of Sport campaign. The Canadians are urging an independent drug worldwide authority and are asking for a high ethical education content in all anti-doping campaigns.

Turkey has sent a brief commentary on the role of sports journalists in seeking purity in sport. "The media thinks that they are a commercial group . . . if there is doping, aren't they also deceived by the doping makers?"

The US will raise the issue of supplemental medals for athletes who were deprived of medals by drugs cheats. There is going to be pressure on a reluctant IOC to begin with the victims of East Germany's systematic cheating regime and work forward in time from there.

The IOC wishes to avoid invalidating decades of Olympic results. The new order asks what sort of message the IOC is sending by preserving the records of cheats in aspic.

It will be a lively week. There will be almost as many agendas as there are delegates. From the point of view of the IOC, it might appear unfortunate to find themselves discussing cheating in the week after they have mislaid so many members guilty of the same offence.

Yet, if faith is to be restored, there is no better place to start than at the track and in the pool and on the pitch. When our heroes have standards again our administrators might stand a little taller, too.