In Defence of Dwain: Why Chambers Deserved an Olympic Place

As the journalist who five years ago exclusively exposed Dwain Chambers as a drugs cheat, you might have thought that I would be the last person to have supported his efforts to be allowed to run in the Olympic Games. But I am disappointed by the decision in the high court today that means the Londoner will not be able to take up his place on the start-line at the Olympics in Beijing next month.

I think that as the only British athlete to have tested positive for drugs and then had the honesty to admit it, he should have been given the opportunity to redeem himself. I know, having sat down with Chambers and spoken with him on the telephone on several occasions, that he knows he has done wrong and is contrite and, just as importantly, is now clean of the seven banned substances he once used to cheat himself, his friends and his rivals.

Just as he was unique in admitting his dishonesty, he is unique in coming back to the sport nearly as good as when he was kicked out of it. If he had won his case there were fears about the message it would send out, a fear that younger athletes would look at his case and decide that a two-year ban was a small sacrifice to pay for a shot at an Olympic medal.

But I can tell you that Chambers does not think the sacrifice was worth it. His reputation in tatters, unable to earn a living other than on the track, he is literally surviving hand-to-mouth. He could have been a powerful ambassador in the fight against drugs. Here was a guy who had it all, lost it, finally came clean but still found that everyone had turned their back on him, including those who must have known what he was doing at the time.

Who do you think his peers would listen to more about the dangers of taking performance-enhancing drugs? A black working-class lad from a council estate who has been there and done it? Or a white middle-class middle-aged man in a blazer sat in an office block in London?

The future looks bleak for Chambers. He is already banned from every major meeting in Europe - a rule imposed earlier this year specifically to prevent him competing - and he has little chance of earning money from athletics until the World Championships in Berlin, which is more than a year away. Chambers must be thinking he would have been better sticking to the code of omerta that normally pervades in such cases. He has done his time, admitted his crime and human decency should have led to him being given a second chance.