Athletics: Chambers' career in the balance as the lawyers and scientists take over

Dwain Chambers is on his marks, set for tomorrow's start to a disciplinary hearing which threatens to bring his sprinting career to a finish.

Dwain Chambers is on his marks, set for tomorrow's start to a disciplinary hearing which threatens to bring his sprinting career to a finish.

Britain's 25-year-old European 100 metres champion and joint European record-holder has been embroiled in one of the sport's most damaging doping controversies since testing positive on 1 August for the newly discovered "designer" steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). He faces a two-year ban if found guilty by the independent three-person panel convened by UK Athletics at the London offices of its solicitors, Farrer & Co.

The moment of truth for an athlete whose achievements have never quite lived up to his mighty ambitions will come just a week after the indictment by a San Francisco federal grand jury of his coach, Remi Korchemny, on charges of distributing banned drugs.

The hearing is expected to be very technical, taking in a number of legal and scientific issues, and its implications will be carefully noted by scientists on either side of the Atlantic.

It seems likely that the main thrust of Chambers' defence will concern itself with the question of whether THG constituted a banned substance according to the International Association of Athletics Federations' list at the time he tested positive for it. His legal team is also likely to be scrutinising the legitimacy of THG's swift classification, given the lack of time for wider scientific corroboration.

The IAAF, however, is confident that THG is performance-enhancing and was covered by their catch-all "related substances" clause even before being identified and added to the list which is sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee.

Meanwhile, UK Athletics has emphasised that the key element in the Chambers case will be the "strict liability" rule, by which athletes are deemed responsible for the existence of any substances in their bodies, whether they know how they got there or not.

The 25-year-old from Finsbury Park has maintained he never knowingly took an illegal substance, although he acknowledges using supplements supplied to his coach by Victor Conte at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, who is also facing charges in San Francisco along with the company's vice-president Jim Valente and Greg Anderson, the personal trainer to the United States baseball star Barry Bonds.

Last week, a spokesperson for UK Athletics stressed that, given the nature of the strict liability ruling, the case being prosecuted in the US was "not relevant" to what the disciplinary committee has to decide.

But the US connection will inevitably be registered by those outside the legal profession given the shock waves which have been felt throughout athletics following the decision last June of an anonymous coach to send the US Anti-Doping Agency a syringe purporting to contain a previously undetected steroid and the name of the man he said had provided it - Conte.

Once a test for the new steroid had been developed by the leading US scientist Don Catlin at the Los Angeles IOC laboratory, the dope-testing establishment, for once, was one step ahead of those whom it sought to police.

Chambers, who was introduced to Korchemny in 2001 and came under his full-time direction a year later, is one of five athletes who have tested positive for the so-called "designer" steroid. The others are all from the US - the shot putter Kevin Toth, the hammer throwers Melissa Price and John McEwen and the 1500m runner Regina Jacobs, who surprised the athletics world last year by setting a world indoor record at the age of 39 and went on to take the world indoor title ahead of Britain's Kelly Holmes.

Korchemny, a 71-year-old Ukrainian émigré who made a contribution to Valery Borzov's sprint double for the Soviet Union at the 1972 Munich Olympics, has been involved with four other athletes who are currently implicated in adverse doping findings.

Chambers' US training partners Chryste Gaines and Kelli White, who won the world 100 and 200m titles last summer, have tested positive for the stimulant modafinil, which is normally used to treat narcolepsy. The same substance also showed up in samples given by the 400m runner Calvin Harrison and the 110m hurdler Chris Phillips, who claimed he was given a single modafinil pill by Korchemny.

The bitter pill for Chambers came two weeks before last summer's World Championships as he prepared his challenge for the world 100m title. The British sprinter - who went on to finish a disappointing fourth in Paris - was target-tested at his training base in Saarbrücken, Germany.

When the initial findings, revealed on 22 October, were confirmed by the analysis of the second part of the sample on 7 November, Chambers was suspended pending the independent hearing that will take place tomorrow and, if necessary, Friday.

Chambers subsequently offered no response to an invitation trailed by the IAAF to plea-bargain by accepting guilt and naming other implicated parties. A spokesman for Stellar, the sports management company which Chambers joined in 2001 and which helped to set up his US training regime under the direction of Korchemny, has denied that the case has had a negative impact on its business.

Of Stellar's 450 clients, 39 are athletes of whom 20 are British, with the higher-profile names including the 1998 200m champion, Julian Golding, the Commonwealth and European long jump silver medallist Jade Johnson and the World Indoor 200m champion Marlon Devonish. The spokesman maintained that Stellar had done everything possible to ensure that Chambers was preparing in an appropriate fashion under Korchemny's guidance.

"Everything that was done in the States was done on trust," he said. "When Dwain began working with Victor Conte 18 months ago, we took the appropriate steps. We asked for a list of all the supplements, and for samples, and had them all sent over and cleared. No alarm bells rang.

"After it all happened there wasn't a lot we could do. We said to the IAAF that we would offer to become the first athletics management company to be regulated by them if that would help the sport. We needed some guarantee to give to all our other athletes that this isn't going to happen to them. But the IAAF hasn't come back to us.

"If the panel don't find Dwain guilty then Athens is very close and the last few months have been incredibly disruptive. He's been training. But I don't think anyone could expect him to keep up his usual level of intensity. He has been ticking over. When you see the effect this has been having on him day-to-day, it is very painful."

All the indications are, however, that life is about to become still more painful for a sprinter who has fallen from grace.

...and the future if he is banned?

If Chambers is found guilty, he has already set up the possibility of an alternative career by following in the footsteps of other athletes who have become American Football players in the National Football League.

Chambers impressed at an initial trial set up by NFL officials at Crystal Palace in January and is due to fly out to Tampa, Florida, on 23 February to attend a four-day training camp where he will join about 60 other hopeful rookies.

"It is going to be very, very tough," a spokesman for Chambers said. "There is a 50 per cent cut rate." Should Chambers clear that hurdle, the next stage of his fledgling career could involve undergoing more training, learning the ropes by joining a team in the European League or being taken on in the practice squad of a leading NFL team. The latter would put him in line to secure a league contract, which pays a minimum $250,000 (£138,000) a year.

The Crystal Palace work-out saw Chambers involved in a three-hour session in front of 10 NFL observers. He had to run sequences through a series of plastic cones and then catch a ball thrown at him from varying directions and speeds by a quarter-back standing on the edge of the indoor arena.

Out of 40 deliveries, Chambers dropped only two. "He was absolutely dead on the floor afterwards, but he exceeded expectations," a spokesman said. "Dwain is one of those typical sportspeople. When he wants to do something he will give it absolutely everything. He is very excited about the possibilities, but we have to keep his feet on the ground."

Chambers would hope to emulate previous track and field exponents Willie Gault, the 1964 Olympic 100m champion Bob Hayes, and the world 110m hurdles champion Ronaldo Nehemiah, who won Super Bowl rings with, respectively, the Chicago Bears, the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers.

The British discus thrower Bob Weir narrowly failed to reach the NFL after the 1984 Olympics, going on to play in Canada before returning to athletics and winning the Commonwealth title in 1998.

Other sports adopted by British athletes include bobsleigh, with the sprinters Marcus Adam and Lenny Paul representing the national team, and football, where Darren Campbell played for Plymouth Argyle and Weymouth before returning to athletics to win Olympic, world, European and Commonwealth medals.

THE PRECEDENTS

All doping cases involving athletes are governed by the International Association of Athletics Federations' central principle of "strict liability", whereby those providing samples are judged to be responsible for whatever substances show up, regardless of whether they knew how they got there.

The principle has been established to prevent athletes gaining unfair advantage over others, and it has operated even in rare cases where the authorities have acknowledged that cases are not clear-cut.

In February 2001, the Scottish sprinter John Skeete was banned for two years by UK Athletics following a positive test for the banned steroid stanozolol despite the fact that it regarded him as "morally innocent". Skeete claimed his dietary supplements had been spiked, and his story was accepted.

Mark Richardson (above) was one of a number of high-profile British athletes who tested positive for nandrolone in the late 1990s and he also received a two-year suspension. But unlike others he retained a sample of the specific nutritional supplement he was taking at the time of his failed out-of-competition test in October 1999, which he claimed had been contaminated with the banned steroid. Laboratory analysis supported his claim and his ban was reduced by the IAAF, who cleared him to race again in time for the 2001 World Championships.

The international discus thrower Peter Gordon tested positive but had his four-year ban quashed in November 1994 by the British Athletic Federation after it was revealed that the findings were caused by him having cancer.

THE LEGAL LINE-UPS

When it comes to legal representation in sport, it is a small world. All three QCs involved in Dwain Chambers' disciplinary hearing scheduled for tomorrow and Friday come from the Blackstone Chambers. The proceedings will be chaired by Charles Flint (right), chosen from a pool of independent candidates by UK Athletics to head a three-person panel alongside a scientific expert and a representative of the sport who is not employed by the national federation.

The man prosecuting Chambers on behalf of UK Athletics, David Pannick, was on the other side of the fence two weeks ago when he appeared in Montreal to help defend Britain's No 2 tennis player, Greg Rusedski, from charges of taking the banned steroid nandrolone.

Chambers will be represented by Michael Beloff QC, who has sat in the Court of Arbitration for Sport since 1996 and also represented the British slalom skier Alain Baxter in his efforts to clear his name following the positive doping test which saw him stripped of his Olympic silver medal from 2002.

Disciplinary panels generally spend two to three days writing up reports before notifying the parent body of any decision, although UK Athletics is likely to come under severe pressure to give an indication of the panel's views before the weekend.

Chambers faces a statutory two-year ban for a serious doping offence and would be ineligible for Olympic participation under the by-law adopted by the British Olympic Association.

Both Chambers and UK Athletics have the option of appealing against any decision, in the English courts or the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.

TETRAHYDROGESTRINONE (THG)

The substance which has come to be known as the "designer" steroid, tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), is so named because it is the product of two other modified steroids - trenbolone and gestrinone. The addition of four hydrogen atoms was all it took to make gestrinone undetectable by standard tests.

According to Steroid World website, THG was created from trenbolone, a stronger steroid. Gestrinone was then modified at a position which made THG an oral steroid, used by placing liquid under the tongue and allowing it to absorb.

But the nature of THG means it is a lot more toxic on the liver than other injectable anabolic steroids. Like other steroids, THG helps to build muscle and increases endurance levels, enabling athletes to train more intensely.

The test for THG was developed by a team of seven scientists working under the direction of Dr Don Catlin (above) at the International Olympic Committee's accredited laboratory in Los Angeles.

Work got under way in June after Catlin was sent a parcel from an anonymous coach containing a syringe with a residue of what turned out to be THG. The delivery followed an anonymous tip-off from a "high-profile" US coach claiming to have details of a steroid that was undetectable under the prevailing system.

Catlin examined the substance using a high-resolution mass spectrometer which created a molecular fingerprint of the substance, allowing it to be analysed and then, in order to prove the theory, synthesised.

The test that was subsequently devised was initially used on urine samples from the US Championships that had been held in Stanford, California a few days earlier, samples which had been providently frozen by the US Anti-Doping Agency. Numerous positive findings followed.