Dwain Chambers [Golden League reprieve?]

[guru]

http://www.insidethegames.com/show-news.php?id=5190

[gh]

or this longer piece that was on the front page yesterday

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?s ... &type=lgns

[Jon]

One thing that was mentioned in one of the Chambers pieces online today was that he dated Kelli White for a year during the BALCO scandal. It didn't go into specific dates, but I thought that White was dating Boris Henry from around 2000-2004? And Dwain seems to have been with his current partner, Leonie, for a fair while too. Maybe there was an overlap in relationships at some point. I just thought it was interesting, and was a tidbit I hadn't heard before.

[Flumpy]

There's absolutely no reason why Dwain Chambers shouldn't be anchoring the 4x1 in Berlin.

In 2003 Dwain ran an atrocious anchor leg at the WC's which lost us the Gold Medal.

He then had the whole team disqualified and more importantly lost his team mates a well deserved silver because of his drug taking.

I can think of no reason why Dwain Chambers should be anchoring the 4x1 in Berlin or indeed any other leg.

Surely his past exploits should be enough to have him dropped from the relay forever. Bare in mind he also lost the team a Euro 2002 Gold medal. To try and cheat your own way to success is one thing but fort your team mates to lose out because of it is unforgivable.

He should never be allowed near a UK relay team again.

[gh]

The Brit obsession with Chambers is starting to make me crazy. There's real track going on out there people!

I think the nadir for me probably came last weekend when a prominent British trackwriter was asked after the meet what he thought about the whole Bayer thing and his response was "Who's Bayer?" When told, he responded, "Ahh... I've spent all day working on Chambers material."

I'm halfway attempted to put a moratorium on Chambers discussion here.

[tandfman]

The Brit obsession with Chambers is starting to make me crazy. There's real track going on out there people!

I think the nadir for me probably came last weekend when a prominent British trackwriter was asked after the meet what he thought about the whole Bayer thing and his response was "Who's Bayer?" When told, he responded, "Ahh... I've spent all day working on Chambers material."

I'm halfway attempted to put a moratorium on Chambers discussion here.

I suspect this is why most of the European meet directors don't want him (or other druggies or ex-druggies) in their meets. No matter what outstanding athletes and events they have, a lot of journos will just want to write about doping. It kills all the positive publicity that the meets might otherwise have and deserve.

[AthleticsInBritain]

To be fair, we're not all obsessed with him - I'm thoroughly bored personally. It was inevitable that one of the 50 meets would break rank - on the basis that all publicity is good publicity.

Really I'd rather talk about the prospects of Steph Twell against Lynet Masai at World Cross.

If you banned talk about him here I'd appreciate it.

[eldrick]

I sometimes wonder if the real issue the press and the authorities have with Dwain Chambers isn't that he served his drugs ban. It's that he offers a different narrative to the ones these entitled dictators fight for control over. They don't want him implicating anybody they're not willing to implicate. They don't want him implicating them. And they'll destroy him over it, even if he tells the truth

i doubt it

journos would sell their genadma to get a scoop & if dwayne points his finger at someone & they chase it up to find a meaty story, they've got a 2 page spread in the inside back pages of a tabloid - they hit the jackpot

they want names, but they don't want to do the initial groundwork themselves & i doubt anyone in the know woud say much to them initially anyway - get dwayne to give them some names & they can jump on those like a dog on a bone & hound the "names" until they get a story

[Jon]

Believe me, most of the athletics journos in the UK (of the ones that are left anyway) are sick of writing about Chambers. They'd all love to write about the up-and-comers and the new personalities in the sport, but they are dictated by what the editors of the papers tell them to write.

[gh]

at any rate, my solution of the day is simple; this gets deported to the "things not track" forum where it won't push the appreciation of the sport out of the way.

[observer2]

Even if The Sun isn´t the most reliable source:

DWAIN CHAMBERS has confessed he is still working with infamous nutritionist Victor Conte

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sp ... 314060.ece

this sounds totally crazy!
PS Are there horns growing out from his forehead? (see picture)

[gh]

Believe me, most of the athletics journos in the UK (of the ones that are left anyway) are sick of writing about Chambers. They'd all love to write about the up-and-comers and the new personalities in the sport, but they are dictated by what the editors of the papers tell them to write.

from canada.com:

<<....Another colleague sent me this Wednesday morning, from Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and opinions editor at www.forbes.com:

"In the hierarchy of life forms on this, our earth, the British tabloid journalist lies somewhere between the hagfish and the dung beetle: However, a story Sunday in the News of the World (proprietor: Keith Rupert Murdoch) has made me scratch my chin and wonder whether we are, in fact, being a tad unkind to the dung beetle.

"The paper's great coup was to lay its grubby, Little-England hands on a photograph of Phelps with his mouth pressed firmly into a glass pipe, or 'bong.' The story's pseudo-declamatory opening line (a tabloid art form, in itself) was: 'This is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.' Given that Michael Phelps' career would have remained blissfully undestroyed had the paper chosen not to publish the photograph, one has to marvel at the amoral audacity of the News of the World: in purporting to 'report' on the potential harm to Phelps' image and career from having smoked cannabis, the newspaper was, in fact, 'perpetrating' that very harm."...>>

[Flumpy]

at any rate, my solution of the day is simple; this gets deported to the "things not track" forum where it won't push the appreciation of the sport out of the way.

I fully agree with this stance Gary.

Although i appreciaate I'm adding to it by commenting on the mater it's actually the media's obsession with Chambers that infuriates me the most.

If they just ignored him he probably would have disappeared by now. It's the attention that he craves more than anything else.

[tandfman]

Even if The Sun isn´t the most reliable source:

DWAIN CHAMBERS has confessed he is still working with infamous nutritionist Victor Conte

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sp ... 314060.ece

Would the Guardian be a more reliable source?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/ma ... onte-balco

How about the Telegraph?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/others ... Conte.html

[tandfman]

Understandably, the British athletics authorities are not happy about this latest development.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/ma ... n-chambers