Athletics: Briton Sweating Over Drugs Test

Christine Ohuruogu, the Commonwealth Games 400 metres champion - tipped potentially to be the face of the London 2012 Olympics - faces an anxious wait before discovering whether she will ever represent Great Britain again.

The 22-year-old Londoner appeared before a UK Athletics disciplinary hearing yesterday. Later this week, it will reveal whether she has been found guilty of a doping offence after missing three random drugs tests in less than a year. Under International Association of Athletics Federations rules, if the independent three-man panel finds against her, she will face a one-year ban.

"The tariff for a first offence under rule 32 is exactly one year," confirmed Chris Butler, the International Association of Athletics Federations anti-doping communications manager.

The British Olympic Association has a strict law that any athlete who serves a ban for a doping violation is ineligible to represent GB again. That would be a devastating blow to Ohuruogu, born and raised less than a mile from where the proposed main Olympic Stadium is due to be built in Stratford, east London, and may force her to turn her back on a sport she only started seriously competing in three years ago but in which she has already made a significant impact.

At the hearing, Ohuruogu blamed a late change of training venue for at least one of her missed tests, believed to be the third one. Her most prominent supporter has been the former Olympic 100m champion Linford Christie, whose management company, Nuff Respect, represents her.

He is already banned by the BOA after testing positive for anabolic steroids in 1999. Christie has claimed Ohuruogu had been "naive" and that it is true no one in the sport thinks she deliberately missed the out-of-competition tests because she was trying to hide anything.

The IAAF demands that all athletes tell the testing authorities where they can be found at a set hour five days a week.