Chambers fights British pomp(ousness) and circumstances
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Is it any surprise athletes have only minimal faith in anti-doping efforts when the people in charge of them apply rules as they see fit?
Latest example: efforts by the holier-than-thou British Olympic Assn. to keep sprinter Dwain Chambers off its 2008 team, even though he won the 100 meters at Britain’s Olympic trials Saturday.
Chambers, among those identified as dopers in the BALCO scandal, came clean and served a two-year ban that ended in 2005. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, that is the penalty for a first violation for steroid use.
The fact that Chambers took steroids on multiple occasions is irrelevant. A longer ban applies only if a known second violation occurs after the athlete has been banned.
The Brits decided in 1992 to add a by-law to their Olympic association rules that would prohibit any athlete banned for a violation of doping rules to compete in an Olympic Games.
That rule runs counter to the globally applicable anti-doping code, as Chambers’ attorneys will argue this week in court, seeking an injunction against the BOA ban. The BOA undoubtedly will argue that its rule predates the WADA code.
No other British athlete has challenged the BOA rule, partly because of the costs involved. That is not an issue for Chambers because he is getting pro bono legal representation.
Many athletes have succeeded in appealing suspensions to the BOA in cases where drug tests were missed or the bans were for ‘lesser’ substances, like stimulants. One of them is runner Christine Ohuruogu, reigning world champion at 400 meters, who could have been banned from the 2008 Summer Games because she missed three scheduled doping controls.
The BOA conveniently waived its Olympic ban three months after Ohuruogu won the 2007 world title, saying the notification system was too new or too complicated or some such poppycock. It also waived the Olympic ban on 2006 triathlon world champion Tim Don for similar reasons.
Former WADA boss Dick Pound, two-time Olympic hurdles champion Edwin Moses of the U.S. and Olympic triple jump champion Jonathan Edwards, a British sports icon, are among those who have criticized the BOA ban of Chambers. Pound did it on purely legal grounds, Moses and Edwards on fairness grounds. Edwards previously had urged Chambers to quit track and field because his presence was damaging the sport.
‘I believe in second chances,’ Edwards told the Daily Mail 10 days ago.
Isn’t that what the idea of serving a sentence is supposed to mean?
-- Philip Hersh
