How do you feel about Dwain Chambers's participation at the national indoor athletics championships in Sheffield this afternoon? Probably not that bothered because athletics no longer stirs us the way it once did. Too many fake promises from far too many doped-up athletes and, unable to trust what we saw, we gave up watching. Who knows this year's world indoor championships are being held in Valencia?
But if your passion for athletics has survived the crushing disclosures of the past 20 years, there will be resentment at Chambers's return to the sport. Nobody can question Dave Bedford's commitment to the sport and when he says Chambers, convicted of a steroid offence in 2004, should be booed this afternoon one understands the source of the anger. Bedford's hope that the public will show disdain for the athlete also expresses the frustration of those whose trust has been betrayed by the cheats. They tell us they are clean and honest, they remind us of the drugs tests they have passed and then the truth emerges. At first the public reaction was disappointment, in the more recent years disappointment turned to outrage but now there is anger.
Bedford isn't alone in his anger. Recently, Angelo Zomeg-nan, the director of the Giro d'Ita-lia, issued invitations to the teams he wants to compete in this year's event. Among those not on the list was the Astana team. Astana is the team of Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer, first and third in last year's Tour de France, and if the invitations were based on results, Astana would have received the first invite.
But there are other forces at work and the organisers of the three major tours - Italy, France and Spain - have grown tired of having their races besmirched by doping scandals and are determined not to invite teams who have recently had riders test positive. Over the past 12 months, Astana have had three high-profile doping cases and while their new team manager, Johan Bruyneel, talks about a new ethos, the Giro d'Italia organisation doesn't want them.
A similar determination to confront the doping problem more aggressively is being seen in the US where baseball's biggest stars, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, find themselves in trouble. Bonds is accused of having committed perjury when telling federal investigators he did not knowingly take performance-en-hancing drugs. The feds did not believe Bonds and he now finds himself in a position not that different to Marion Jones.
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Clemens is speaking before a senate committee, denying he ever used performance-enhanc-ing drugs. Not many believe him as his former trainer, Brian McNamee, has testified under oath that he injected the pitcher, an allegation Clemens vigorously denies. His former trainer, however, says he has an old syringe with traces of blood belonging to Clemens. It is a controversy that could not have taken place in the United States
five years ago, but times have changed.
Chambers now finds himself in the same front line as the baseball players and the cyclists of Astana. The public has lost patience and Bedford speaks for many when he encourages public disapproval of the sprinter. Undeniably, it is athletes such as Chambers who have given athletics a bad name but he is just one cheat in a list that is barely fathomable. And while one understands the emotion behind Bedford's call, there is no logic in pillorying one more than the others. Chambers received a two-year ban for taking an anabolic steroid, served his time and wants to return to his sport. Of course, there are factors that lessen any enthusiasm one might have had for his return but to single him out is not fair.
When he first returned to the sport in mid2006, there was more tolerance than there is now and that is understandable. Not only didn't he show much contrition for his doping but when he decided not to persevere with his first comeback he said it was not possible to win the major prizes in sprinting without doping and that a clean athlete could only win if a doped rival had a really bad day. It is hard for fans to hear that from a confessed doper but what Chambers said was nothing more or less than the truth. At the time of that first comeback, Chambers's GB teammate Darren Campbell let it be known he didn't agree with the returning athlete being allowed to compete for the national team. Campbell was entitled to his view, and many saw it as admirable, but the rules allowed for the reinstatement and perhaps the argument would have been better made if directed against the rules rather than the person.
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In the same way, Bedford's call to boo Chambers is unfair. If the rule is a bad one, it should be the target for the former distance runner's disapproval. There is another reason why any personal attack on Chambers lacks fairness. He cheated because he believed it would be disadvantageous for him not to. His assumption was undoubtedly correct as a number of his rivals are now known to have cheated. What he did was wrong, it was against the rules of his sport and it violated sport's law of fair play. He deserved his two-year ban and would have deserved a four-year ban if the laws had allowed a four-year sentence.
Why is it that punishment for use of anabolic steroids is two years not four? For years, sport's administrators have been weak on doping and their weakness contributed to a significant worsening of the problem. It is not long ago that the governing body for British athletics was half-hearted in its antidoping policy and ran a confidentiality policy that was first cousin to cover-up. Eventually, the sport's world governing body brought that to an end. That was the culture in which Chambers came through as an athlete and his decision to cheat was in part determined by the environment in which he competed. Unlike all of those weak administrators, Chambers has at least served a sentence.
Regardless of what happens in Sheffield today, the greater question remains to be tackled. Chambers wants to compete in the Beijing Olympics and will probably achieve the results good enough for selection, but under the British Olympic Association's (BOA) rule that those who serve drug bans cannot compete for the GB team at the Olympics, Chambers cannot be chosen.
But it is a rule that has proved flexible enough to reinstate world champion Christine Ohu-ruogu and while the BOA will insist there were mitigating circumstances, the rule has been weakened by the success of the 400m runner's appeal. Chambers and his legal adviser have indicated that if the BOA refuses to allow him to join the GB team for Beijing, he will take his case to a court of law.