Even though he was eventually caught by the authorities, Victor Conte, the man behind Balco, the Californian laboratory that was exposed as one of the most comprehensive doping operations in sports history, insists that taking performance-enhancing drugs and beating the antidoping police are “as easy as taking candy from a baby”.

“They’re learning, they’re progressing,” he said of the antidoping authorities. “But in certain regards they are of the opinion that they are doing a better job than they really are.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) followed its executive committee convention in Montreal last weekend with a statement that it intends to intensify its work coordinating with customs, drugs and law enforcement agencies worldwide. This approach, Conte said, is the way forward for Wada. “Is it effective?” he said. “Without a doubt – because of the tools they have. These guys can wire-tap.”

This is clearly necessary when he reels off the drugs he claims are in use. “Do athletes use insulin? Yes, it’s undetectable,” Conte said. “Do athletes use thyroid medication? Yes they do, it’s undetectable. Do they use growth hormone? Yes, it’s undetectable. Do they use EPO [erythropoietin]? Yes they do, that test is extremely easy to beat.”

Most of what he said is true. A growth hormone test is being engineered and insulin can be detected, but it is extremely hard to test for.

That is why police operations, such as the one that broke Balco, are essential. However, Conte, who was imprisoned for four months after the California laboratory was exposed as a doping operation, said that it is wrong to assume that there is a prevalence of hi-tech operations such as Balco – he doubts that there are more than five – and also wrong that designer steroids, the likes of which Balco engineered, are rife. It is age-old testosterone that is the drug of choice.

“The use of designer drugs is significantly lower now because they [Wada] have changed the rules and now, if they find anything related in structure [to another illegal substance], even if they don’t know what it is, they can call it a positive test,” Conte said. “So now people are doing it with fast-acting testosterone. They can use, for example, testosterone undecanoate; a lot of athletes are doing it in Italy, it’s freely available in Mexico.

“You take these pills – typically 40 milligrams each – three or four times a day and you need to duck and dive for only a short time because they clear the system in four days. So you can do very intense weight training for just a couple of weeks and significantly enhance your explosive strength.”

This business of “ducking and diving” is where Conte believes the system is beatable. “I don’t consider in-competition testing to even be dope-testing,” he said. “I call that IQ-testing. If you are dumb enough to be caught in a competition, then you are mentally retarded. It’s during the off-season that athletes do their real weight training. That’s where the doping problem has always been.”

In the off-season, athletes have to provide “whereabouts” information and it is here, Conte said, that they play the system. “If you say you’re going to be training in Ohio, for instance, but you’re really in Florida and they [the drugs-testers] show up – and the odds are not very good of that – you get a ‘missed test’. The upside of that is you’ve also got a cycle of steroids under your belt. And you’re getting more steroids in on the other times when you are not being caught.

“But if you are caught a second time, you’ve got another missed test, but you’ve also had another cycle of steroids under your belt. The rule is three strikes and out. And it’s a moving timeframe of 18 months, so you show up at the World Championships or the Olympics, win a gold and soak up the endorsements until one of those missed tests drops off. Then you are in a position to duck and dive again because the consequence is nothing more than a missed test. That’s how athletes do it. The authorities say that they test more and do target-testing, but you can still duck and dive.”

How could the doping police do a better job? Conte insists that he has answered these questions. He has had three meetings with the US AntiDoping Agency and in February 2005 he spent three hours with an official from Wada. “And I didn’t do it in exchange for leniency,” he said. “I did it for the right reasons: to create a fully cooperative acknowledgement of the massive drug problem in elite sport.”

For the doping authorities to be more successful, he recommends better target-testing. “When you see that the fastest two men in the world are both from a track club in Los Angeles, for instance, or the Bay Area, or North Carolina or Jamaica – this should be worth looking at. What you need to do is take the dollars you have and the number of tests you have and focus your resources on the top ten in each event. Why test the top 100 – the people who are not winning races and not winning dollars? Why test everybody two times when you could test the top ten ten times?”

He also recommends better timing of the testing. “The testing used to drop off hugely in the fourth quarter of the year. But my point is, this is the off-season quarter when the athletes are using substances for their intensive weight training. Why did the testers decide to take a nap then?”

This is why, he said, Balco’s level of sophistication is not required to be a cheat. “I know of people who have very little information and are still able to get round the procedures. The authorities say they are improving – and they are. But is it still relatively easy for athletes to use drugs and beat the system? The answer is yes.”