Jacques Rogge is an unusual character. He presents himself with the firm jaw-line and earnest hair of the hero of an American mini-series specialist ("nice teeth and a good dancer" is the vicious rap against him), but he carries a lot of experience around in his handsome head.

He played rugby union for Belgium 10 times and lived to tell the tale. He was also a two-time world champion Finn-class yachtsman. He sailed in the Olympics in Mexico, Montreal and Munich, and, most controversially, he was team leader for the Moscow Games and had to fight his government for the right to go in a time of boycotts.

Rogge is an orthopaedic surgeon based in his home town of Ghent, he speaks five languages (Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish) and has been an IOC member since 1991. He is president of the European Olympic Committee and chaired the co-ordination commissions for the Atlanta and Sydney Games.

This summer he will probably replace Juan Antonio Samaranch as president of the IOC. Rogge is 59, which, in IOC terms, makes him an infant prodigy.

Campaigning is hectic right now, but that's how his life is. Airports and hotels and meetings. Rogge is the front-runner in the IOC election which takes place in July, and, among those who claim to be able to read the smoke signals from the Lausanne Palace Hotel, he is Samaranch's anointed heir. You shouldn't hold that against him though.

He's progressive, says the things which most people would like to hear said about the Olympic movement, and he says them without pomposity even if, like all the candidates, he has a tendency to slip into Olympic-Speak and uses phrases like "global harmony and vision". Most polls have him well ahead of his nearest rival.

"My life right now is a little bit more active than it would be normally," he says as he takes a seat across from you after stepping off a plane at Dublin airport. "Already it is hectic, so it's just a bit more. I can't complain."

It is 21 years since last there was an election to the top job in world sport, and the business has changed from the roots up since. The job which Samaranch leaves behind is different to the one he assumed. Samaranch took the chair at a gentlemen's club and leaves behind the position of CEO in a global corporation.

"There has been a lot of change," concedes Rogge. "Everything is totally different. In 1980, I was team leader of my team, we were there in Moscow in difficult conditions because we fought the boycott of our government - as the Irish did, by the way - but the IOC itself was totally different, it was a small group of people with no money, a very conservative group, still clinging to the hypocrisy of the amateurism. There were no women in the IOC. You looked, and said someone should change all that.

"And the IOC did change those things. The IOC opened itself up to athletes and representatives of sport, it rode the wave of commercial support and corporate support, it introduced the best athletes, saw the potential of TV deals. All changed."

For the best, though? The tidal wave of money coming into the IOC brought the usual vices with it and swept away a lot of the old values from which the Olympic movement claimed its moral standing.

"I think," says Rogge, "there is a place for those values more than ever. It wasn't always as it seemed. We used to have unfair Games, because money decided who could participate, the Games were the playground of rich countries. Until the end of the 1960s, only 60 per cent of countries participated; even in Munich only about 70 per cent participated, only the rich could afford to do sport. Now, with the introduction of corporate sponsorship and TV money, we have a situation where more people can compete, the Games are genuinely global."

The answer is typical of Rogge and signifies the place he occupies in the race to succeed Samaranch. His principle rivals are Dr Un Yong Kim of Korea and Dick Pound of Canada. Kim is old school IOC, implicated in the Salt Lake City scandal and the originator of a sly suggestion recently that the old system of IOC members visiting bidding cities might be revived. Pound is a tough Canadian tax lawyer who rubs people the wrong way with his arrogance and certainty. ("The way you say `No' can be elegant," said Rogge recently, in an apparent dig at Pound. "It does not have to be brutal, rude or opening your big mouth.")

Rogge, on the other hand, works hard, keeps a low profile and accentuates the positive. He speaks softly and carries a big stick. He may not be a well-known face, but he scores with the constituency that matters right now: his 125 colleagues on the IOC. When he speaks about values, ethics and doping, he has nothing controversial to say. He is for values. He is for the money, too. Once it's used well.

"With money you get pressure on ethics," he says. "That didn't exist before. The next challenge is to defend the values, against doping, against corruption, taking care of our responsibility that the athlete, after a career, can reintegrate to normal physical life and not fall into a black hole."

But surely, you argue, the growth of the Olympic movement and its commercial marriages have, at the very least, given rise to the perception that perhaps the big stars will never be caught?

"No. I think the corporations and television people are clever enough to understand that the association with doping will damage their own image. More and more sponsors are having clauses in their contracts that in case of doping the contract is broken."

Rogge's stance on drugs is genuine; he was instrumental in securing EU funding for research in growth hormones five years and was among the first to see the potential for the World Anti-Drug Agency (WADA). Yet, out of loyalty to the IOC, he has found himself defending the odd sticky wicket. It was he who had to announce that the medals of East German stars found to have cheated would not be re-awarded to the swimmers deprived of them. "Unjust, inept and arbitrary" was the condemnation of US swim coach John Leonard at the time. Rogge fields the question in a practised way.

"You can only penalise for the period when the athlete is found guilty. In the case of Michelle de Bruin, you may have doubts on whether she was clean or not when she won the medals, but she is not proven guilty for swimming those records and medals so she is allowed to keep them. There will always be a cloud, but there is a presumption of innocence, and from a purely legal point of view you cannot take it away. The reputation, of course, is diminished. It is a bit of weakness we have, but we have to respect the judicial process."

Doping has been one of the themes of his gentle campaign so far. He has identified drugs as the primary threat to sport in this century and expresses an interest which goes beyond the choral tut-tutting which most sports administrators engage in. He feels sponsors and television must become partners in fighting drug abuse through research.

"The number one challenge is doping. Doping has reached an unacceptable level. We must do more than we have done in the past, we have to fight on all fronts and I'm not so naive to think it will disappear altogether, but we have to reduce it to lower levels.

"I am very interested in scientific research, because of my profession as well as my sport. Yes, we need more money. WADA will be the tool for that, I hope, and governments will decide to give money, and also sport and the sports community. We must spend money. Yes. We must research better and faster."

The corridors of power, of course, are not littered with administrators openly in favour of drugs, so Rogge's stance is almost a given. It is the priority he places on the issue which is hopeful.

On the more delicate issues . . . Going back to Moscow in 1980, he has been forced to juggle the priorities of personal morality with the politics of sport. He fought for his team to go to Moscow.

"Basically, I thought you cannot sacrifice a generation of athletes who had absolutely nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I have found that sport should not be a tool of politicians to settle differences. I think, in the meantime, they have realised that the boycotting countries are more penalised than the boycotted country.

"Fundamentally this was something I could not accept, it was playing with the lives of the athletes and it was hypocritical. They still kept an ambassador, made money out of trade. If it is so unacceptable you call back your ambassador, you cut commercial links. You don't go to the weakest point for whom you don't do enough, you don't go there for the media exposure and say, `Hey, athletes, don't go'."

And for Beijing?

"Absolutely the same point goes for Beijing. No government should intervene in the choice of the IOC. Having said that, every IOC member has a conscience and has to judge with his own conscience as an individual. My assessment is that every bid will be assessed on a series of standards, and one of those will be human rights."

And for Jacques Rogge personally?

"For me the issue of human rights will be as important as security, care of athletes, economic development of the country. You have to judge a whole scale of issues, assess each one of them."

There's a worst case scenario in there which hardly bears thinking about: the IOC vote for Beijing in the eye of human rights protesters at the start of the week in Moscow, and the on the last day they elect Un Yong Kim, who kick-starts the gravy train again. Rogge doesn't believe in nightmares.

"Perception has improved and the success of the Sydney Games has helped. Sydney did a lot of good for the IOC, but it is still a long, uphill battle. A reputation is lost in a second, but you have to earn it every day, painstakingly. That is what we have to do in the future. Earn our reputation back. There are other issues."

He is fatigued with the size of the Games these days. Sydney required 60,000 volunteers alone.

"We must look at the size of the Games. It is at the limit of what we can organise. De-scaling is, in my opinion, not too difficult. Trimming down budget, it's too expensive; trim down technology, don't build huge venues with no after-use for the city; we must trim down the number of accreditations, 140,000 to 190,000 in Sydney; the number of athletes, at between 10,000 and 11,000, is okay."

He speaks of the size of the Games and what a country gets and what it loses. The Games have become a haven for the rich. As a "little Belgian", does he see a successful bid every coming from a country smaller than Belgium?

"Greece has 11 million and it is a border case. Still possible. Ireland would have the possibility, but it would be a nation's effort. With the economic development of Ireland and with expertise it would be just possible, but it would be a very heavy burden. The fundamental question is, do you need it? Would it be useful to the country? Is it useful? That's an answer I cannot give."

And Jacques Rogge gets up and is soon working the room next door. Quietly but well. A man you don't meet everyday. On July 16th, his 125 peers will pass judgement on him and tell the world what sort of Olympic movement they actually yearn for.