UKA Shut door on Chambers.
January 27th 2008 02:10
UK Athletics have elected to bar disgraced British sprinter Dwain Chambers from competing at the world indoor trials in two weeks time.
The move comes after rumours surrounding the former European champion’s return to competitive action circulated as his career in American football was cut short due to the league being dissolved.
Chambers had been banned for two years (2003-2005) after testing positive for the designer steroid THG.
The governing body cites Chambers has not been drugs tested since November 2006 due to the athletes desire to take up American Football and want a full year’s worth of drugs testing to be completed before they will allow the 29 year old Londoner to compete again.
UK Athletics chief executive Niels de Vos is quoted as saying a “12 month period of random out-of-competition testing is the absolute minimum I would find acceptable before facilitating Dwain Chambers's return.”
De Vos also said, “We now need to ensure that when the system catches a cheat, we do not allow those cheats an easy way back into the sport.”
This quite frankly is ludicrous, Chambers has served his time and should be praised for his honesty and forthrightness – there have been many drugs cheats that have always protested their innocence even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Instead he is hounded idiotically at every opportunity by a governing body eager to maintain Britain’s ‘holier than thou’ attitude at the expense of a man’s right to compete and to not be discriminated against.
The man served his time and has a right to re-enter the competitive arena.
This sort of public humiliation is never carried out in other athletics nations; it is hard to imagine a giant of the sport such as the United States, Jamaica or Russia effectively giving a life ban to one of its most prized athletes.
An example of this is America’s Justin Gatlin who having worked the system has a strong possibility of returning to competitive action in under 4 months time, do you think that USADA will be putting up road blocks in order to prevent him attempting to defend his Olympic crown?
Of course not.
Ultimately Dwain Chambers is the victim here, he made a mistake and this cannot be denied or excused but his ban was served and he has as much of a right to re enter competition as any other athlete convicted of a drugs offence.
The reason UKA have given for banning Chambers is also ludicrous since many drugs used by the world’s top sprinters are undetectable after a matter of hours so 12 months of drugs testing is a political reason relying on the assumption that those reading it have little understanding of how modern doping works, just like UKA employees it seems.
De Vos also points a hole out in his own reasoning unwittingly by saying “Those athletes who compete in the trials with a realistic proposition of making the World Indoors are likely to have been part of the testing programme.”
However as has been the case on many previous occasions where senior athletes have had a breakthrough year or junior athletes have excelled, UKA have taken athletes with little or no prior drugs testing, further indicating that this sad state of affairs is more to do with politics and pandering to the uneducated media than what is best for the athlete or even the country as Chambers would surely be a massive boost to a relay squad showing the potential to be world beaters.
Dwain should be subjected to the same testing procedures that all other athletes who have served a suspension i.e. three random drugs tests carried out over the space of 3-4 months as Dwain went through previously.
What is happening to him is unfair and wrong, he has the same rights as all of us and his right to compete deserves to be upheld.
A sad day for UK Athletics.
The move comes after rumours surrounding the former European champion’s return to competitive action circulated as his career in American football was cut short due to the league being dissolved.
Chambers had been banned for two years (2003-2005) after testing positive for the designer steroid THG.
The governing body cites Chambers has not been drugs tested since November 2006 due to the athletes desire to take up American Football and want a full year’s worth of drugs testing to be completed before they will allow the 29 year old Londoner to compete again.
UK Athletics chief executive Niels de Vos is quoted as saying a “12 month period of random out-of-competition testing is the absolute minimum I would find acceptable before facilitating Dwain Chambers's return.”
De Vos also said, “We now need to ensure that when the system catches a cheat, we do not allow those cheats an easy way back into the sport.”
This quite frankly is ludicrous, Chambers has served his time and should be praised for his honesty and forthrightness – there have been many drugs cheats that have always protested their innocence even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Instead he is hounded idiotically at every opportunity by a governing body eager to maintain Britain’s ‘holier than thou’ attitude at the expense of a man’s right to compete and to not be discriminated against.
The man served his time and has a right to re-enter the competitive arena.
This sort of public humiliation is never carried out in other athletics nations; it is hard to imagine a giant of the sport such as the United States, Jamaica or Russia effectively giving a life ban to one of its most prized athletes.
An example of this is America’s Justin Gatlin who having worked the system has a strong possibility of returning to competitive action in under 4 months time, do you think that USADA will be putting up road blocks in order to prevent him attempting to defend his Olympic crown?
Of course not.
Ultimately Dwain Chambers is the victim here, he made a mistake and this cannot be denied or excused but his ban was served and he has as much of a right to re enter competition as any other athlete convicted of a drugs offence.
The reason UKA have given for banning Chambers is also ludicrous since many drugs used by the world’s top sprinters are undetectable after a matter of hours so 12 months of drugs testing is a political reason relying on the assumption that those reading it have little understanding of how modern doping works, just like UKA employees it seems.
De Vos also points a hole out in his own reasoning unwittingly by saying “Those athletes who compete in the trials with a realistic proposition of making the World Indoors are likely to have been part of the testing programme.”
However as has been the case on many previous occasions where senior athletes have had a breakthrough year or junior athletes have excelled, UKA have taken athletes with little or no prior drugs testing, further indicating that this sad state of affairs is more to do with politics and pandering to the uneducated media than what is best for the athlete or even the country as Chambers would surely be a massive boost to a relay squad showing the potential to be world beaters.
Dwain should be subjected to the same testing procedures that all other athletes who have served a suspension i.e. three random drugs tests carried out over the space of 3-4 months as Dwain went through previously.
What is happening to him is unfair and wrong, he has the same rights as all of us and his right to compete deserves to be upheld.
A sad day for UK Athletics.
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