HOW'S this for a tale of hypocrisy from the twisted world of British athletics. At the Sydney Olympics of 2000, the English sprinter Darren Campbell was coached by Linford Christie. The year before, Christie had received a two-year ban for doping, his punishment ending his running career but not preventing him starting a new life as a mentor of young men moving in his slipstream.
Then, as now, Christie claimed he was innocent, arguing that the metabolites of the banned substance nandrolone found in his urine sample were there because of legal nutritional supplements. The IAAF dismissed his argument, which was not hard, given
that Christie was 100 times over the limit for nandrolone.
At a press conference in Sydney, Campbell was asked about the morality of attaching himself to a man who was convicted of taking performance-enhancing drugs. Campbell didn't want to discuss it. He offered words of support for his coach while at the same time criticising the athletics writers for stirring things up. He said he wasn't getting involved in a debate over Christie "because you guys have caused the problem". "You guys" in this instance being the journalists.
Campbell didn't exactly strike you as a leading light in the battle to beat the cheats and yet wind the clock forward to the European championships at Gothenburg in 2006 and Campbell is transformed. Well, after a fashion. Dwain Chambers was a team-mate of his as Britain won gold in the 4x100m relay. Chambers had served his two-year ban for the anabolic steroid TGH by then. He was, generally speaking, welcomed back into the world of British athletics.
The double standards of the sport were never better illustrated than on that day. Campbell, coached by a cheat six years earlier, decided he was going to take a stand against Chambers and so he boycotted the lap of honour. Happy enough to let Chambers assist him in winning gold, he was damned if he was going to be seen walking around the track with him. Campbell does not accept that the sprint relay medal was tarnished yet he felt that Chambers, who ran the critical anchor leg, was crooked. Not a lot of logic in that really.
There were only mutterings of protest over Chambers' involvement prior to Gothenburg and even the hushed indignation was rendered silent in the golden aftermath. Save for Campbell's pathetic showboating, there was little said about Chambers' past at all. But now it's an issue all over again. The hypocrisy returned in force last week when Chambers qualified for the World Indoor Championships to be held in Valencia next month.
You wonder what exactly has upset the athletics establishment the most in the Chambers case. Is it the fact that he took drugs or that he admitted taking drugs or that he said that without drugs the big prizes in his sport would almost certainly be beyond him. None of these things did anything for his popularity with UK Athletics but all of them are true. The irony is that having cheated his way into the affections of the authorities with his rapid improvement on the track, he has now distanced himself from them simply by being honest. That's the back-to-front morality at work here.
Is it Chambers' fault that he was not banned for life? No, it is not. He received the maximum ban available. Namely, two years. It should be four years. Maybe it should even be life but this is irrelevant to the argument. Fact is the ban is two years. He has served it and he deserves to be allowed to get on with what is left of his career.
Chambers says he is being treated as a leper and you can see what he's getting at. He was ignored by the promoters of yesterday's Norwich Union Grand Prix in Birmingham and knows that 51 other events on the sprinting calendar are off limits to him. There is an event in Stockholm on Thursday and another in Paris on Friday and Chambers has not been invited. The way things stand he's going to turn up in Valencia well short of race sharpness.
You'd stop well short of holding up Chambers as a campaigner for anti-doping but we can't forget that eventually he told the truth. In that, he is something of a rarity and deserves a degree of respect. He has said in the past that he would like to tell his own story to young athletes in the hope of steering them clear of the traps he fell in to. That would be useful and responsible. Chambers has a big role to play in his sport yet and much of it should be spent in the classrooms where the next generation of sprinters reside.
What is hard to stomach is the moral outrage of the athletics world. Niels de Vos, the chief executive of UK Athletics, and many others have sought to bury Chambers and yet have ignored Carl Myerscough, the shot-putter, who represents Britain despite having been banned for doping offences himself. Christie will be at the Olympics this summer as coach to the British sprinter, Christian Malcolm. But Myerscough and Christie are different somehow. How? We would really like to know.
How the mighty have fallen victim to Premier League's bullWHEN Eamon Dunphy had a go at Roy Keane last week, he was guilty of biting the hand that fed him. In a financial sense, Dunphy prospered greatly from his relationship with Keane, the journalist receiving a vast chunk of cash for ghost-writing the Corkman's autobiography.
Dunphy, though, has been a fierce ally of Keane's. He has defended him when seemingly not another soul in Ireland (outside his home place in Mayfield, that is) stuck up for him. Dunphy regularly went to war on Keane's behalf. With that in mind, his volte face on Keano last week was interesting.
"I know Roy well and the one thing he hated when I knew him and when we were working on that book was the bullshit that was a part of manager-speak and part of player-speak," Dunphy said on Irish radio. "But now he holds these lengthy press conferences every week in which he anoints David O'Leary to be the next Ireland manager, anoints Terry Venables to be the next Ireland manager. He talks about how wonderful it is for the Premier League to play games abroad and he's just become rent-a-quote. It's quite extraordinary. This is a sharp, smart, outstanding human being and he's just been sucked into that awful Premier League vacuousness. It's sad to see Roy Keane bullshitting. But there you go. It happens."
Dunphy has a point. Listening to Keane getting all enthusiastic about the globalisation of football was bizarre. Keane is in support of the Premier League being taken around the world at the whim of billionaires. I remember a story about Keane and billionaires. It was the day of a hugely important Champions League knockout game while he was still in his pomp at Manchester United.
Sir Alex Ferguson, who was still friends with the racehorse breeder John Magnier and high roller JP McManus at the time, brought the Irishmen into the team hotel that afternoon. Keane was said to be furious at the intrusion in the inner-sanctum. Ferguson introduced Magnier and McManus to his captain and Keane was polite but distant. They moved away from him, sensing his displeasure. As Dunphy might have put it, he was in no mood for bullshit.
Alas, his tolerance level seems to have increased somewhat since then.
The full article contains 1283 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
