Britain's medals raise issues

This article appeared in the Irish Examiner
pg 15 Friday 22 August

Britain's medals raise issues

by Dr Leonard Durac and Marc Thompson Grolimund

Although many of us have spent the past week looking on enviously as Team GB climb ever higher up the medal table, the images of Britain's most recent track gold medallist, Christine Ohuruogu, smiling from the winners' rostrum, pose some embarrassing questions for British administrators, particularly in light of the very different approach that was taken in the case of Dwain Chambers, whose efforts to run in Beijing were resisted all the way to (and inside) the High Court in London.

What Ohuruogu and Chambers have in common is that both have served bans for doping offences. In 2006, Ohuruogu served a one-year ban for missing three drugs tests, whereas Chambers served a two-year suspension for using the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).

Since 1992, Bylaw 25 of the British Olympic Association (BOA) statutes has stipulated that an athlete banned for a drug offence is ineligible to compete in any future Olympic Games.

It is from here that the paths of Ohuruogu and Chambers diverge. Whereas Ohuruogu's lifetime Olympic ban was lifted by an independent Sports Dispute Resolution Panel due to what were termed "significant mitigating circumstances", no such concessions were made for Chambers, whose efforts to have the High Court declare his Olympic ban an unreasonable restraint of trade were in vain, despite the judge's admission that "many people both inside and outside sport would see this bylaw as unlawful".

Those of a cynical disposition might be inclined to believe that Ohuruogu's lifetime ban was ultimately reversed because of her status as the 2007 World Champion in her discipline, and therefore a clear gold medal contender in Beijing. Unlucky enough that his specialist discipline — the 100 metres — should coincide with the freakish talents of the Jamaican wunderkind Usain Bolt, Chambers differed from Ohuruogu in the crucial sense that he represented no more than an outside hope of a minor medal.

This fact was readily acknowledged in courtroom, where the judge effectively dismissed the argument that Chambers was a potential medallist, noting instead that eight men had posted faster times than Chambers in the first half of 2008 alone!

The broad theme of doping and the punishment of drug cheats has preoccupied the RTÉ Olympic panel for the past two nights. Speaking on RTÉ's Olympic panel, Eamon Coughlan argued that it was important to distinguish between merely missing drugs tests and actually failing a test.

He fails to acknowledge the link between missing drugs tests and doping, the former representing the only method of establishing evidence of the latter.
An athlete can take drugs during the off season and "bulk up" and then that same athlete can later benefit in competition from the progress made whilst doping in the off-season.

For this reason, out-of-competition testing is as important as the tests that are conducted within the competitions themselves, perhaps even more so.

It is ironic, therefore, that — as Team GB luxuriates in its best Olympic performance in over a century — its administrators are on the defensive and stand accused of rank hypocrisy in its handling of the Ohuruogu case. The Dwain Chambers saga laid bare many of the weaknesses in the present models of governance in British athletics, and highlighted the fragility of the BOA bylaw, as well as the rather illogical distinction that is made between the Olympic Games and other forms of international competition.

There was a rather surreal moment on the steps of the High Court in London, in July, when the BOA chairman, Lord Moynihan, welcomed the prospect of Chambers running once more for Team GB in the World Championships of 2009, when he had just emerged from an acrimonious legal battle to prevent the sprinter taking his place on the plane to Beijing.

Beyond the bumper medal haul, and talk of Downing Street receptions, and victorious parades through London, there is clearly much work for the governing bodies to do to get their own houses in order ahead of the London Games in 2012.

Dr Durac lectures law in University of Limerick and Griffith College, and Marc Thompson Grolimund is a practicing barrister with High Court experience.