Australia vowed to run drugs off the road to the Olympics when it won the right to host the Games in Sydney this September, but the wheels of sports bureaucracy do not spin fast enough to outpace performance-enhanced athletes.

Wednesday's revelations that Australian Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning discus thrower Werner Reiterer has blown the lid on national sports officials who he claims have condoned and covered up drug use among athletes, and the ensuing inquiry, make a mockery of Australian Sport and Tourism Minister Jackie Kelly's assurances in Tokyo this week.

Kelly swung into town to talk with Japan Olympic Committee chairman Yushiro Yagi and other JOC members about "Australia's preparation for the Sydney Games and international efforts to eliminate drugs in sport."

It is difficult enough to eliminate something you cannot detect, without having officials actively protecting dopers.

Kelly, a former national rower and an outspoken antidrug crusader, insisted that science was gaining ground on cheats when she spoke at a media conference at the Australian Embassy on Tuesday.

"I think the key thing to take out of this is that whatever the latest substance the cheats are using, the time frame between when they commence with something that gives them a drug-enhanced performance and the time frame in which we find something to catch them out is decreasing," she said.

But the Olympics are 71 days away and Reiterer has just blocked what little of the road remains. Substances such as Human Growth Hormone (HGH), which helps build muscle, and Erythropoietin (EPO), which builds endurance, continue to wreck the efforts of those trying to overhaul the International Olympic Committee's halfhearted testing system.

Kelly highlighted the role that both Australia and Japan have in a new World Anti-Doping Agency that ensures Sydney will see an independent observer of drug testing.

"It has also jointly funded an EPO research program using Australian research based on blood samples, separate from the French urine sample (that was not finished in time for this year's Tour de France), that we are confident there will prove to be a test for EPO," Kelly said.

"As for the Human Growth Hormone, there is some promising British research." What Kelly didn't say is that there will be no way to test for HGH in Sydney. The IOC didn't make funding available for research; the British research will not deliver a test for this Olympics; and athletes using the drug will not be caught.

"The HGH, for reasons that the IOC would only have to answer, (the IOC) did not fund that, currently," said Robert Crick, head of the sport and tourism division at Australia's Federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources. "They possibly felt that it wasn't quite as close to having a test as the EPO. But it's got to be next cab off the rank." As for EPO, while Australia is confident there will be a test, there may not.

Australian researchers have until the end of the month to prove to the IOC that it has a reliable blood test. Their chances have been rated as 50/50 by IOC Medical Commission Deputy President Jacques Rogge, who has conceded that most sports are under threat from doping.

JOC Competitive Development Deputy Director Yuji Hirano said last week he did not believe an Australia EPO test would be ready for the Games.

"My personal information from Sydney friends and (inside) the (Sydney Olympic) organizing committee is that they cannot use a test of the EPO," he said.

It is not just HGH and EPO that could go undetected.

Crick will not guarantee that testing in Sydney will identify every other substance an athlete uses -- and athletes can also use masking and purging agents, or simply stop using in the leadup to the Games. Androstenedione -- the drug that Major League Baseball star Mark McGwire uses legally -- leaves the body within 24 hours and traces disappear within a month.

Reiterer is not the only athlete to admit drug use is rife in sport. Some coaches, athletes and experts have estimated up to 80 percent of Australia's world-class athletes have used drugs, and then argue the nation's athletes are not the worst.

As for Japan, Hirano said that no Japanese athlete had been proven to be a doper.

Two volleyball players have returned positive tests, one for a legitimate medication and the other because of high but natural levels of hormone, he said.

Asian Games gold-medalist Koji Ito, the first Asian sprinter to run 10.00 in the 100-meter-dash and who has been picked for the Sydney Olympics, was suspended in the mid-90s after returning a positive test but was later cleared, he said.

Asked why no Japanese athletes have been confirmed as drug cheats, Hirano argued that they simply have high ethical standards.

"Many sports include the (Japanese) word 'do' in their names (as in ju-do)," he said. "In my personal opinion 'do' is a sacred way of life."

But what is sacred to athletes and sports fans alike is winning. No one remembers who came second. And equally, no one thinks about drug use until someone is caught.

The paradox Australian Olympic officials face is that they have to catch cheats to prove their methods are effective. But catching cheats will taint the Games.

"They talk about the Sydney 'clean' Games, but if you don't have any drug incidents in Sydney, then you would wonder whether it was the clean Games because you would feel that some got through. So there is a little bit of a dilemma," said Crick.

The real dilemma is that despite efforts to head off the scenario, Sydney looks set to host the greatest circus of chemically-engineered gladiators that the world has ever seen but not detected.