The head of research at the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI), Sandro Donati (photo), recounts his personal story about twenty years of fighting against doping in Italian and international sport. An unbelievable story which nevertheless is true.

How can we describe a press corps that up until 1998 passively hitched a ride on the professional cycling caravan, allowing the riders to lift share values up with them into the mountains?

Disclosures of doping during the 1998 Tour de France were the cause of a hysterical debate in Denmark. A contributory cause of the fierceness of the debate was, perhaps, the fact that the Danish national hero Bjarne Riis had won the Tour two years previously.

Modern sport faces a complex set of challenges. Today, I will focus on two major problems, which are especially relevant to the main topics of this conference.

The international fight against doping, as headed by the IOC and the big federations, is at best hypocritical and at worst disastrous. Education and personal responsability must be a new key word in a national doping policy.