In bars, in taxis and in editorials, Australians have begun to fret that their Olympics will be remembered as the drug Games. With drug testers at least talking a good game and with dozens of panicky competitors having already quietly erased their names from the starting lists the Australians fear their celebration will be dimmed by scandal.

Not so. Not so. If a thousand athletes test positive, including the entire final field in the men's 100 metres sprint, it will be a cause for rejoicing. Nothing could be more depressing than another Olympics where news of suppressed positive tests leaks out afterwards to pollute the memories. We don't want to leave Sydney feeling that we got fooled again. We've done that before.

We did it in Los Angeles in 1984 when a number of positives just vanished and we did it at every Olympics right through to Atlanta when an unknown number of samples disappeared from an IOC safe. Later, positive tests for the stimulant bromantan were dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport because the test used had not been scientifically approved. Thirty years of IOC testing has caught 54 athletes.

The battle against EPO has been waged late and with more of a flair lately for appearances than results. Erythropoietin is produced naturally by the kidneys and stimulates the production of red blood cells. Used medically to aid treatment for a range of ailments from anemia to AIDS and deployed during chemotherapy, EPO has become an invaluable aid to athletes who want to illicitly improve their recovery rates in training.

We know already that things can't be perfect here. We have no test for Human Growth Hormone (HGH), a drug of choice in some corners of the Olympic village. Nor is there any detection method approved yet for tracking down the increasingly prevalent users of insulin growth factor.

Even the much ballyhooed EPO tests were announced by the IOC in time for a competitor of average wit to have benefited from months of crooked endurance training and still arrive in Sydney begging to be tested. Why, even good old-fashioned steroids are still so prevalent that you have to be unbelievably arrogant (Why hello, Linford) or dumb (G'day, Ben) to get caught.

The IOC, still punch drunk from a two-fisted attack on its bidding-process ethics and its limp contribution to the drugs war, has pushed the issue a little in the run up to these Games, showing a little nerve by introducing a test for EPO about a dozen years after cyclists began dying from misuse of the stuff.

It's fair to say that even if the EPO test (in fact two separate tests, one developed by the French, the other by the Australians) is too little too late, it may have done some work already in scaring off a few dozen cheats who opted not to come to Sydney rather than risk exposure. The French test operates on the basis of urine samples and differentiates between the drug and natural hormones in the urine. The Australian test uses a less direct method based on blood markers.

It remains to be seen if the IOC can hold its nerve if a big name with oodles of shoe sponsor money and lots of prime-time television appeal tests positive this month. It seems at this stage as if the intention was to put a large scarecrow in the field as a mild deterrent. Whether the IOC would risk legal proceedings against a name athlete as the first real test of the efficacy of their new procedures is doubtful. Medical and legal opinion at present suggests that the new tests have been insufficiently validated by independent experts to withstand legal challenge.

Dr Charles Yesalis, a professor at Penn State university and the author of several books on the use of performance-enhancing drugs, was to the point when he told the New York Times: "Nothing's changing here. Somebody tell me why athletes won't go back to blood doping. These Games are going to be as drug-laden as the rest. This smacks of public relations. After four decades of pathetic behaviour the stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming."

Already there are some reasons to be fearful. In Australia this week it was disclosed that while the IOC shaped up tough by introducing the combination of the French and Australian tests, the reality was masked by some rather vague talk about the time period in which the tests could detect drug use. It transpires that the IOC declined the option of going alone with the more comprehensive test already developed by the Australian Sports Drug Laboratory.

The tests which the IOC opted to use detect signs of EPO use in the previous 72 hours. The Australians were happy that they had a test which would detect use any time within the previous month. The benefits of EPO use are felt fully two weeks to a month after use. ASDL officials have stated that they felt their test, which detects use within the previous month, could have been and should have been the stand-alone test for the Games.

The Australians point out that theirs was the test used by the Chinese laboratory earlier this month in internal testing which led to the withdrawal from the Games of 27 Chinese competitors including those trained by the legendary Ma Junren.

In Sydney, because the back-up French urine test only detects use in the previous 72 hours, that will be the parameter for which all athletes are tested.

The scientist who developed the Australian test, Dr Robin Parisotto, was quoted on Australian television as saying that the one-month version "was the strength of the blood test, absolutely".

More alarmingly, in the clinical trials conducted by the ASDL, the month-long test revealed no false positives in over 3,000 tests, while the French 72-hour version has produced a handful of incorrect readings.

Still. The IOC may not have re-invented itself as the Elliott Ness of the locker-room syringe set, but performing about 900 blood tests as well as the usual batch of quaint urine tests is a start. The blood tests to be carried out in Sydney cost about $800 a time while the matching French urine test adds another $2,000 to the cost. At least some money is being tossed at the problem. Increased finance for research which has been made available since the foundation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) may yet mean that the IOC sabre-rattling is backed by something a little more potent.

So, too, is the attitude of Australian customs authorities who, not for the first time (remember the World Swimming Championship in Perth), have demonstrated that the criminal activity in the trafficking of sports drugs is lucrative and generally safer than dealing with edgy addicts. Detection rates in the business of smuggling performance-enhancing drugs and in the matter of re-directing them from their legitimate pharmaceutical use is lamentable.

With better research, the more determined approach of WADA, and an increased level of police interest in how amounts of drugs are diverted to athletes, there are reasons to be optimistic.

The improved version of the Australian test is likely to achieve approval some time soon, as is a new test being developed in California by the renowned drug detection expert Dr Don Catlin. Catlin, like Yesalis, didn't see the introduction of the IOC test as being tantamount to having won the war.

"There's probably a lot more drugs out there in sport than the general public would think. They'd be fairly horrified."

Catlin is right. People would be horrifed. That's the challenge, excising the cancer while keeping the patient alive.