Drug cheat Chambers an embarrassment to Britain

[The High Priest]

The pusillanimity shown by the British selectors is shameful.

You can't legally not select him? Fine, let him take it to the courts, thereby illustrating just how fucked up the system is. To cave in at the first sign of trouble is just woeful, but sadly of a piece with the appeasing tendency this country is becoming famous for.

Once upon a time, kids, England stood for honour, fair play and probity. Now we're just a bunch of shysters on the western edge of Eurabia.

[Rob]

Ditto with the ECB's attitude to Zimbabwe and Kolpak players - utter weak capitulation at the first hint of a lawyer becoming involved to the detriment of what's ledt of the game in this country.

[The High Priest]

Ditto with the ECB's attitude to Zimbabwe and Kolpak players - utter weak capitulation at the first hint of a lawyer becoming involved to the detriment of what's ledt of the game in this country.

Spot on.

You can add to the list: England agreeing to a play a friendly with Jack Warner's Trinidad because it might help us win the 2018 World Cup.

[bigjohnpearson]

brother's served his time, let him run i say
only realistic chance of a medal we've got anyway

[SimonB]

One argument I heard put forward was that the drugs taken still give him an advantage even two years later. Does anyone know if that is actually true ? As if it is then a life ban has got to be the response to drugs cheats. Otherwise it would be worthwhile taking them getting banned and being better when you get back.

[the flying pig]

One argument I heard put forward was that the drugs taken still give him an advantage even two years later. Does anyone know if that is actually true ?...

well, you know, when you do weightlifting or something you inflict lots of minor tearing on your your muscles... and... then, when you rest, your body naturally works on rebuilding the muscles, making them that bit bigger the next time arounds... male hormones play an important part in this... so a 20 year old man will achieve much quicker repair and muscle growth than a 40 year old man, or a woman... what steroids do, i suppose, is basically to speed up this process...

er, actually, i have no idea.

i feel a bit sorry for old dwayne, dwaine, whatever his name is though, since:

1 - drug taking is so common in sport, i mean, if the same level of stringency that you have in athletics had been applied at the rugby world cup you have to wonder whether some teams would have even have had enough players left to put together a sevens side - in a sense he's just 'unlucky'...

2 - the rules seem very odd... it would be a lot less confusing and controversial if the rules were simpler, e.g. you served a ban of X years and then you started with a completely clean slate, or else you just served a lifetime ban... if they set X equal to 10 or something the two would mean broadly the same thing...

3 - it's not as if chambers could sensibly be said to have "got off lightly" if he was allowed to return to all competitions now... at 29 yrs old, presumably in the last throes of his career, he's by all accounts flat broke, despite having once seemingly having had the sporting world, at least by UK standards, at his feet

4 - some of the press treatment of him is very strange, e.g. the fact that he's admitted what he did, rather than protesting innocence, seems somehow to be being treated as kind of an aggravating factor, rather than a mitigating one as it would tend to be in many non-sporting situations...

[SimonB]

Just looking at a couple of web sites it seems as if an athelete can maintain the muscle after coming off steriods if the the process of coming off the drug is carefully managed. So it certainly seems possible that drug cheats maintain an advantage after serving their bans.

[thechubbyone]

It’s an interesting point that the way he admitted it is going against him. That is pretty rare, as you usually get the tired old excuses like “it was a cough remedy”, “he ate a lot of red meat”, “it was a baldness cure”. All totally false given the levels required to cause a failed test, yet on some level it seems people are more accepting of this. He should have just done a Rio and fucked off at the first sign of a test, said sorry, taken a few months paid holiday and come back as if nothing had happened.

If you can still get the benefits of steroids years after coming off them, then it’s not really his fault, but the result of a flawed system which allows such athletes to return. As usual with British sport we deal with problems once it’s too late.

Morally this has caused a lot more outrage than Lee Hughes coming back into football, despite the fact he caused the death of someone and then tried to hide it. Have we got something mixed up here, or is it just that we keep sporting issues entirely separate?

[the flying pig]

i am not sure about the lasting nature of the benefits of steroids...

one thing that's definitely true [i think] is that in very general terms [i.e. steroids or not], once you've got there, it's somewhat easier to maintain a level of strength and muscle mass once you've got there than it is to build it up in the first place.

i thikn that the benefits of steroids testing do slip away to a degree though... e.g. i'm sure i recall reading that, about 10 yrs ago, following the introduction of testing in the WWE or whatever it's called now, a number of wrestlers noticably got smaller, which was unpopular with fans, leading to the controls being slackened somehat...

an undoubtedly damning aspect of the chambers case i suppose is the fact that he kind of appeared to retire for about four years [taking time out to try his hand at american football and a reality tv fuckwit], meaning that he could have been injecting his way to superman status, stopping the drugs a couple of months or whatever before his comeback [it has to be said, his physique right now seems to compare very favourably with that of most sprinters out there, maybe this is something that danny could give advice on]... i think the athletics rules basically say that if you officially retire [which he didn't, although it may have been assumed that he did] then there are really strict controls on you or something [you have to be tested for a number of months/years in teh period leading up to you coming out of retirement or something?]

basically the rules need to be cleared up. given that the rules are unclear, how 'should' chambers be treated? er... hard to say really... he is undoubtedly a cheating cunt, but he's hadly unique in this in the athletics world [just ask GW] and i don't especially begrudge him the chance to earn a few quid before he has to hang up his spikes in a couple of years' time.

[Foreverwhite]

As things stand he's served his time, so he should be allowed to run.
Although personally I'd like to see the ban increased from 2 to at least 4 years.

[The High Priest]

Englishmen ought not to cheat.