He thought he was doing them a favour but they rode him out of town on a rail. Friends had worried about him. They'd whispered stuff into his ear about messengers always ending up getting shot. In the end, though, he thought everyone would be grateful. It would wrap up nicely. Australia would be grateful and Werner Reiterer could look his kids in the eye.

Athletes don't live in the real world, though. They grow up in hermetically sealed bubbles with nothing but ambition and self delusion to nourish them.

When it comes to big decisions they should really take the advice of grown-ups. Reiterer published his book Positive last summer. Then Australia came around to his house and gave him a good kicking.

For a start, Reiterer announced he had been a cheat. He said how he had cheated, when he had cheated, and detailed the process of becoming disillusioned with the soiled nature of sport, fed up with the hollow wins.

He wrote, too, about the culture in which he cheated, a smirky underworld of double lives. He painted a picture, but didn't add detail to the faces. He wrote the story but didn't name the names.

That's how it goes in sport. Names cannot be named. When a guy called Darrell Robinson put away his spikes in California in the late 1980s he found that out. When he was crying about what went on he was just another loser who couldn't even name names. When he put names like Florence Griffith Joyner and Carl Lewis and coach Tom Tellez into the air they came down on him like a ton of lawyers.

When Willy Voets wrote Massacre a la Chaine arising out of the Tour de France, the writs hit the fan and he was dismissed as a bitter little loser - right until the point where he sat in court and saw Richard Virenque confess that, well, yeah, all his denials had been rubbish, he was as dirty as Voets said he was. When Paul Kimmage wrote A Rough Ride, still the best book written on the subject, people had just two questions: Did Roche take gear? Did Kelly take gear?

Names cannot be named. People make up their mind about sports stars intuitively. Despite the androstenodione, despite the tampering, despite the missed tests, despite the dodgy coach and shonky improvements, there are people out there, some writing for papers, some working on the radio, who believe Michelle de Bruin to be clean. That's after.

So when Werner Reiterer chose Sydney Olympic year as the occasion to mount a oneman campaign alerting people to the problem of drugs in sport, telling them of his experiences on the battlefield, they had only one thing to say to him before the kicking began. Name the names. Put up or shut up.

AS anyone who has been there knows, this is the rock and the hard place option presented by the fans-withtypewriters media which acts as a free gratis PR machine for sport. If you name the names you are a two-dime snitch whose ass will be sued to infinity and beyond. If you don't name the names you are a coward, you are a bitter little man.

The fact you might have something to say about the way sport is run is coincidental. The argument disappears into a Catch 22 cul de sac: you tell people how testing is a joke and here's how people got away with it. People put their hands over their ears and say we're not listening, we're not listening, all the tests were negative, so there. And you can't name names because the tests were negative. So on.

Then, last week, Gennadi Touretski's safe turned up in half a metre of water near the Dunlop Dam outside Canberra. It had been stolen from his house the previous Sunday. Touretski is a Russian who was hired to coach swimming at the Australian Institute of Sport. When he arrived, he was followed by Alexander Popov, the most charismatic swimmer of his generation, a man so at one with the water that for a swimming nation like Australia he became the son they never had.

Touretski's safe had been forced and then abandoned. Inside were medals given to him by three swimmers, including an Olympic gold from Popov. Also there was a glass phial with 10 stanozolol tablets. Two heroin addicts were later arrested for the theft.

And a slurry spreader of rumour and doubt began to operate. What was Touretski doing with stanozolol. Why something so primitive? Why still in the safe? Could Michael Klim, could Popov? If you found Paula Radcliffe dealing EPO down a back alley it couldn't be more surprising. Could it be a frame up? Two smack addicts concocting such a thing?

Suddenly there were more questions than answers and Werner Reiterer's telephone began to ring again. In recent months the only person calling was his lawyer. When the Olympic circus went away the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) had its own little bit of kicking to do. Even though Reiterer was retired to the building trade, they sought to drag him to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and have him banned. Even though it might cost his his house, he decided to fight them and headed to the Supreme Court to do so.

When Reiterer's book came out the AOC had produced a wonderful piece of Lewis Carroll nonsense. They announced an inquiry five hours after publication, asked Reiterer if he would name all the names please. Reiterer declined. Inquiry closed.

But yes, unhappy the land that needs its heroes. Werner Reiterer's phone is ringing again. What do you think, Werner? What are the signs, Werner? What next, Werner?

Touretski, Klim, Popov - they could all be clean as whistles, but the week has brought a smile to Werner Reiterer's eyes. Nothing in sport is forever. Not heroism. Not vilification. Not isolation.