Dwain Chambers was named in the Great Britain team for the World Indoor Championships in Valencia yesterday, but there was no attempt to brush his past under the welcome mat as UK Athletics (UKA) made it clear that the sprinter was not wanted.
The governing body admitted that it was shackled by its selection criteria and had no choice but to pick a man who won the 60 metres at the trials on Sunday. It then launched an astonishing attack on the former European champion, who completed a two-year doping ban in 2005, accusing him of denying up-and-coming athletes a place in the team. “The committee was unanimous in its desire not to select Dwain,” a UKA statement read after the six-man committee had named him in the first wave of picks.
It will go down in sporting history as one of the most begrudging call-ups of all time. No sooner had UKA accepted that its refusal to select the winner of the trials would have resulted in a High Court writ from Chambers’s lawyer than it said that the athlete would not be invited to its showpiece meeting on Saturday, the Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham. “It’s like having a party and we can invite who we want,” a UKA spokesman said.
Jon Ridgeon, managing director of Fast Track, the event promoters, said: “Both UKA and Fast Track do not want the world’s No 1 indoor meet to be overshadowed by this issue.”
Chambers admitted last night that he was “being made to feel like a leper”. He added: “A terrible stigma has been attached to me but people need to know I am clean. Yes, I did something wrong, I did the crime — but I’ve done my time and moved on.”
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The UKA statement read: “It is extremely frustrating to leave young athletes at home; eligible for Beijing, in possession of the qualifying standard and committed to ongoing participation in a drug-free sport. In contrast, we have to take an individual whose sudden return . . . suggests that he may be using the whole process for his own ends.”
That reflected the panel’s suspicion that Chambers may not last long in the sport and will find sympathetic promoters hard to come by. Also included in the team was Carl Myerscough, a shot-putter who has served a ban for taking steroids.
Chambers, 29, was considering last night whether to challenge the British Olympic Association (BOA) life ban automatically issued to doping offenders. Nick Collins, his lawyer, said: “We will have that conversation at some stage, but it’s been a case of ‘let’s get him in the team and take it from there.’ ” The BOA said that it will vigorously contest any challenge.
UKA’s main gripe is that Chambers has had only one drugs test in more than a year. However, it was the governing body’s decision to remove him from UK Sport’s out-of-competition register when he pursued an ill-fated career in American football at the end of 2006. The IAAF, the world governing body, has since confirmed that Chambers did not officially retire and has endorsed his comeback.
Although Chambers was recalled to the Britain team in 2006 after his ban expired, Dave Collins, the UKA performance director, said that there “had been a hardening of the stance throughout the sport. This is about what athletics needs to do to . . . reassure the public that when they see a performance they are seeing a kosher one.”