Chambers to launch appeal against Olympics ban
Dwain Chambers’ legal team will file papers against the British Olympic Association in London later this morning in a bid to pave the way for him to compete at next month’s Olympic Games in Beijing.
Chambers is currently barred from competing in an Olympics under a BOA bylaw which ban drug cheats from the British team unless there are mitigating circumstances.
Chambers, 30, is well aware that having served a two-year suspension for using the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) there is no chance in pursuing the mitigating circumstances route through the BOA.
Instead he has taken the decision of going directly to the High Court and the necessary documents will be served by hand by his representatives at the Queen’s Bench instead of being mailed from his solicitor’s office in Leeds.
“That is correct, all of the paperwork has been completed and to speed things up will be delivered personally to London,” said his Leeds-based solicitor Nick Collins.
Collins is hoping the BOA will agree to the case being heard next week, before the British Olympic trials take place in Birmingham the following weekend.
Chambers, after posting the fastest 100m time by a British athlete of 10.05seconds in Sofia on Monday night, is favourite to win the title.
A victory at Alexander Stadium where the heats take place on the Friday evening (July 11), followed by the final the following afternoon, would normally guarantee him selection.
His barrister Jonathan Crystal, a specialist sports barrister, will need to convince the judge at the hearing, which may possibly last two days and cost around £200,000 (€251,000), that the BOA regulation is unfair.
There have been successful appeals against the lifetime ban in the last 16 years – the last being 400m world champion Christine Ohuruogu’s – but nobody has challenged the actual legality of the rule in the courts.
