Three athletes on panel

The five-strong British Athletic Federation disciplinary committee which found Diane Modahl guilty yesterday included three former international athletes - Chris Carter, Joslyn Hoyte-Smith and the chairman, Dr Martyn Lucking, writes Mike Rowbottom .

The other members were Walter Nicholas, who is a solicitor in Manchester, and Al Guy, a member of the International Amateur Athletic Federation's technical committee and a senior official with the European Athletic Association.

This highly experienced panel was selected by Sir Arthur Gold, a long-standing hardliner against drug abuse, in his capacity as chairman of the BAF's drug advisory committee.

Lucking, who is now practising as a GP in Blackpool, competed at three Commonwealth Games as a shot-putter in 1958, 1962 - when he won the title - and 1970.

In 1988 he flew out to Lanzarote to perform an out-of-competition test on Jeff Gutteridge, the pole vaulter who became the first Briton to test positive for drugs when the sample he gave showed evidence of steroids.

Lucking was an adviser to the federation in the recent case of Peter Gordon, a shot putter who has been cleared of a doping ban by the British federation on the grounds that illness had prevented him from offering a full sample.

Hoyte-Smith held the British 400 metres record in the early 1980s. A member of the BAF's drug advisory committee, she also was a member of the panel which turned down Jason Livingston's appeal against a four-year drug ban in 1992.

Carter, a former policeman, is also a member of the drug advisory committee, and was once a European 800m silver medallist.

Nicholas is a senior official with the Northern Counties Athletic Association and a member of Trafford Athletic Club.

Guy, as an Irishman, is the first foreigner to have been a member of a disciplinary panel for the BAF. He was the man responsible for the testing procedures at this summer's European Championships.