LONDON 2012: Time for BOA to reconsider their stance on Millar and Chambers

IT'S time for the British Olympic Association to abandon their gold standard, whose lustre, on closer inspection, is not quite so shiny anyway.

LEGAL: LaShawn Merritt might be able to compete but he is banned from next year's Olympics because of his recent doping conviction. US officials will find out the result of a legal challenge on Thursday, which could have major implications for the British Olympic Association (Getty Images)

Their prized byelaw - which bans for life anyone convicted of a doping offence from official involvement with the British Olympic team - was introduced by former BOA chairman Sir Arthur Gold in the early 1990's, a response to the growing use of performance enhancing substances.

But in the two decades since, the rule has been repeatedly appealed, indeed only three of those appellants have been unsuccessful, which makes its whole worthiness seem a little arbitrary.

Tomorrow morning the Court of Arbitration in Sport will release a binding verdict in a case that could have far reaching implications for the BOA's position ahead of next year's London 2012 Games. 

The United States Olympic Committee are challenging rule 45 of the Olympic Charter, introduced in 2008, which prevents any athlete from competing in a Games that follows a doping conviction. UPDATED 06/10/11 10.00AM - Decision has now been published, CAS rule in favour of USOC

As a matter of law, I think the BOA would be on pretty shaky ground. If the BOA sought to deny me a place on their Olympic team on the basis solely of my earlier drugs offence, I would say that they don't have the power to do that." Dick Pound, former chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency

Olympic 400m champion LaShawn Merritt is seen as the most high-profile benefactor of a decision in their favour. 

Merritt tested positive for banned substances DHEA and pregnenolone, which he claimed were present in his system as a result of ingesting a 'male penis enhancement product' called ExtenZe.

In his case the word longer should be added the Olympic creed of faster, higher, stronger.

He returned to international competition earlier this year after completing a 21-month ban and the USOC argues that preventing him competing at next year's Games amounts to punishing him twice for the same crime and is, unfairly, effectively increasing the length of his ban.

IOC officials counter they should retain the right to decide who competes in their competition but a number of powerful figures, including Dick Pound, the Canadian administrator who pioneered the World Anti-Doping Agency, have questioned the fairness of that position.

All of which puts the British Olympic Association and their chairman Colin Moynihan in a tricky spot, considering they are even more hardline in their approach.

However, it remains to be seen whether two likely challengers to the BOA's current regulations - cyclist David Millar and sprinter Dwain Chambers - have the resources or desire to risk the negative publicity that will accompany a legal appeal against their bans, if CAS gives them a precedent on which to hang their challenge.

In addition, Moynihan claims the Olympic Charter allows individual national Olympic committees to determine eligibility standards for their teams and points out an appeal process is in place, with skier Alain Baxter, who was banned for inadvertently using a Vicks inhaler, and athlete Christine Ohuruogu, who missed three random drugs tests, among those cleared to compete in subsequent Games.

But he might do well to discuss that position with UK Athletics chief executive Niels de Vos, who expressed a similar sentiment before he was told by athletics' world governing body that he had no choice but to select the winner of the national trials for the 2008 World Indoor Championships, which just happened to be Chambers.

IMPRESSIVE: David Millar dominated the cycling time trial at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi but his former drugs ban means he is ineligible for Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics (Reuters)

Millar has become a passionate advocate of clean sport since his return to cycling after a two-year ban for using EPO in 2004, and his recently published and searingly honest autobiography is recommended reading.

Unlike Chambers he has never challenged his Olympic ban, claiming that he didn't want to 'risk all that negative energy'.

But there is no doubt he wants to compete, he said so at last year's Commonwealth Games, and while medal potential should never be a consideration in such decisions, he would be a valuable ally in Mark Cavendish's bid for road race gold and genuine podium shot in the time trial.

Chambers has also rehabilitated himself since returning to the sport in a blaze of publicity, following the publication of a ghost written autobiography that, unlike Millar, who wrote his words without assistance, did his cause little good.

He remains a divisive figure but he's well liked by team-mates and praised by UK Athletics coaching staff, including Charles van Commenee, for his determination to succeed despite the self-inflicted obstacles he has placed in his path.

Those who support the current BOA stance repeatedly cite research that states 95 percent of British Olympians, past and present, support lifetime bans for drug cheats. It's worth noting it would take a brave athlete to put their name to anything less hardline, perhaps for fear of arousing suspicion. It's also true that in private most are more realistic and much less strident." Sportsbeat's James Toney

Team GB will send 550 athletes to next year's Games - and not every one will have a clean as a whistle back story of hard work, honest endeavour and partisan passion for all things red, white and blue.

Take heavyweight boxing hope Simon Vallily, who last year won Commonwealth Games gold.

Six years ago, around the time London was awarded the Games, he was sentenced to four years in a young offenders's institute after a violent and unprovoked knife attack. 

And then there is Jurgen Grobler, the brilliant mastermind behind British Rowing's incredible success for almost two decades.

He has admitted encouraging young rowers to take banned drugs in the 1970s and 1980s during his time as a coach in his native East Germany.

According to documents of the reviled Stasi state police, he was within an inner circle which ran East Germany's rowing schools, where children as young as ten were given anabolic steroids.

Both men have shown genuine contrition, admitted their mistakes and are now well travelled down the road of redemption.

They are free to be involved next summer, so should Chambers and Millar.

© Sportsbeat 2011

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