'Life Ain't As Fun As It Used to Be. It's the Land of the Unknown'

It is hard to feel sorry for a drug cheat who sullied the name of British athletics and caused his relay teammates to be stripped of their World Championship medals, but spend a couple of hours at the athletic grounds of Chabot Junior College watching the football team train and the temptation to wrap their No 11 in a sympathetic embrace becomes impossible to resist.

No offence to the Gladiators, as they are known, who seem a spirited, good-natured bunch, but this place is not the Coliseum. More to the point, it is not the running track of Zurich, or Paris, or the Olympic stadium in Athens. This is home to a junior college football team, the outer limits of the American sporting solar system. It is the bottom rung - the place where Dwain Chambers has decided to start again.

From No 1 in Europe to No 11 at Chabot. From 9.87 seconds for 100m and dreams of gold in Athens to standing on a touchline 6,000 miles from home wearing oversized shoulder pads and watching American kids shove each other around. From European champion to non-playing wide receiver on a team going nowhere. It is a bathetic scene and it raises one immediate question.

"Why?" Chambers shrugs and smiles. "American football is a sport I've always wanted to play but didn't know how to. I didn't have the time because I was busy doing track stuff. Now I've got two years to occupy and I'm trying to make the most of it."

Complicated

The answer is more complicated than that, as Chambers, 26, acknowledges. For one thing there is the prospect of the National Football League (NFL). The word is that at least one team - the San Francisco 49ers - would be interested in signing Chambers if he showed even the slightest aptitude for American football. As Chabot's coach, Danny Calcagno, points out: "You can teach anyone to play football but you can't teach speed."

The NFL money would be great, especially now that Chambers' savings are gone, much of it on a costly settlement with his former management company, Linford Christie's Nuff Respect, over a disputed sponsorship deal. Then there is the Balco scandal, or as he describes it, "the grey cloud".

"For once in my life I can walk down the street and no one bothers me. When I was at home I got bugged all the time," he says, before correcting himself. "Don't get me wrong, that's a good thing normally. But not now, not while I am under this grey cloud. I don't want to be seen in that light."

The grey cloud, of course, is the out-of-competition drug test he gave at a training camp in Germany on August 1 last year which proved positive for tetrahydrogestrinone - a previously undetectable steroid allegedly developed at the Balco laboratory near San Francisco. That set off a chain of events which led to Chambers receiving a two-year ban from all athletics, a lifetime ban from the Olympics, the loss of his European and World medals and, most of all, the loss of his reputation as one of the sport's good guys. He claimed he was innocent but then they all do. Twelve months later he is not quite ready to confess, but comes close. "When it happened I knew that me being who I was, that it wasn't going to look good. I thought, here we go. I had to laugh. What the hell else could I do?"

Admit guilt and accept the punishment? "I was harshly treated. I wasn't the only one who had gone out and got in trouble for supposedly taking steroids, yet I got banned for life from the Olympics. Everyone else who gets busted then comes back. I got the worst of all of us. Apparently only Britain and one other country kick athletes out of the Olympics. I think that's messed up, considering I had been running up and down for England and putting my arse on the line."

Chambers arrived in California two months ago. He rented a flat in Millbrae, a town close to San Francisco airport - and a 10-minute drive from the Balco lab. He signed for Chabot because he used to train at the college under his old coach, Remi Korchemny. The whole Balco gang used to train at the college - Alvin Harrison, Calvin Harrison, Regina Jacobs, Kelli White - all elite international runners now banned from athletics. Korchemny, meanwhile, is facing criminal charges in connection with the Balco scandal.

"I still see Remi sometimes, when he comes down to the track," Chambers says. "He talked to the people at the college and helped get me a spot on the team, even though I'd never played the sport before."

It is not hard to fathom Chabot's motives for accepting Chambers. The team - two wins, eight losses last season - could do with all the help (and publicity) it can get. Sub-10 second sprinters don't come knocking that often.

"He's quick," says Gladiator's wide receiver Joe Brown. "I was the quickest at my high school. But compared to him I'm nothing; he's a very, very fast Ferrari and I'm your standard Oldsmobile."

Marginal

Unfortunately for Chambers, so far he has been unable to secure his student's visa, which means he has not been able to enrol for classes, hence he can not play in matches. All he has are the team's twice-weekly training sessions and even then - because he is not in the team - he plays a marginal part in proceedings.

"Life ain't as fun as it used to be," he confesses. "I used to have a routine. I'd get up and I'd train - get ready for events, for Athens. Now I don't have a routine any more. It's the land of the unknown."

Instead, he spends a lot of time in his flat, reading, playing video games, watching television. California has 500 channels but he still could not stop himself tuning in to the Olympics.

"That was tough but I had to face my demons. I had to watch it in order to get over the fact that I wasn't there." He forces a grin. "Certain people didn't win and I was happy about that. Not to mention any names..."

Maurice Greene, his old rival? "No comment."

What about those who did win - his old team-mates, Britain's 4x100m relay team? "I was happy ..." he says, hesitating. "I was gutted as well, though. We always worked hard to get gold at the Olympics or World Championships or whatever and never got there. Then the minute I wasn't there, they win. But they deserved it, they worked hard for it. We worked hard for it."

Had he contacted the squad to offer congratulations? "Nooo," he whistles, mortified at the suggestion. "I thought the best thing to do was walk away. Everything and everybody I have ever known was connecting to track and field but my life is different now; I'm in a team sport, in a different country. It's hard, but I've committed myself to this and I have to see it through."