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May 2, 2012

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WADA's chief criticizes BOA

WORLD Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman says the British Olympic Association has "been held up to ridicule" by its failed bid to enforce a selection policy which prevented athletes who have served doping sanctions from competing at the 2012 London Games.

Howman said the BOA had also wasted "hundreds of thousands of pounds" on a fruitless attempt to enforce the rule which would have barred the likes of disgraced sprinter Dwain Chambers from the British Olympic team.

Howman said WADA had warned the BOA, before it took its case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, that the rule contravened the WADA code and conventions which prevent an offender being punished twice for one offense. In 2003, Chambers tested positive to the banned designer steroid THG and in February, 2004, he was banned from competition for two years. He was later allowed to return to competition but was barred for life from the Olympics under the BOA's rule.

The British selection rule mirrored the International Olympic Committee's Osaka Rule, introduced in 2008, which barred athletes who had served drug-related suspensions of more than six months from competing at the Olympics.

But the IOC rule was thrown out by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in October, 2011. The CAS ruled the sanction was "invalid and unenforceable" and was "more properly characterized as a disciplinary sanction rather than a pure condition of eligibility (to) the Olympic Games."

Chambers has indicated he will now press his strong case for inclusion in the team.

 

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