The legal challenge comes before the High Court today for directions (the full hearing won't take place until this time next year) but Chambers' lawyers are asking the judge for an injunction pending the full hearing permitting him to participate in the 100m sprint at the Olympic Games in August.

Chambers was banned almost five years ago after he tested positive for the performance-enhancing and banned drug THG. He is excluded for life by a BOA by-law which his lawyers will argue is unlawful. The whole issue is shrouded in controversy at every turn with different interest groups totally divided about both the BOA's decision, but equally Chambers' decision to challenge the ban in the courts. But it will be a wholly different balancing act that the High Court will be concerned with today.

Legal challenges of this nature are notoriously difficult for those affected by the decisions of the national regulatory bodies that govern their sport. It was a different kind of sprinter that set the most recent precedent in this area two years ago when a greyhound owner faced a ban after his dog tested positive for traces of hexamine, a banned substance.

The owner, Mr Flaherty, challenged the decision of the National Greyhound Racing Club, but the court re-emphasised the position of an earlier decision concerning another Olympic athlete, Diane Modahl, which said that the courts ought to be slow to interfere with the decisions made by sporting bodies "far better fitted to judge than the courts".

The test the court will apply is whether the sports body acted fairly but not to the extent that it would impose unreasonable requirements or undue burdens on organisations such as the BOA "which promote a public interest by seeking to maintain high standards in a field of activity which otherwise might easily become degraded and corrupt and ought not to be hampered in their work without good cause".

If this does not appear to bode well for Mr Chambers, it is important to bear in mind that the court will be anxious to ensure that the principles of natural justice have been observed in how Mr Chambers has been treated. The judge will want to be satisfied that the Association has not imposed a disproportionate punishment.

However, the sentence was not discretionary since the by-law that is being challenged required the Association to impose the lifetime ban its conduct is unlikely to be the subject of criticism. The court in Modahl's case said the question it is appropriate to ask is "whether, having regard to the course of the proceedings there has been a fair result". Each side has its own viewpoint.

Alan Wells, the 1980 Olympic Champion, stated it would be "a loss to athletics" if Chambers won. Yet the iconic Ed Moses described the ban as "a death sentence" and that Chambers should be allowed to participate. There are more objective opinions. Mr Chambers, of course, knew the rules when he decided to break them. Balanced against this, however, is his apparent, genuine remorse and preparedness to see the sport reformed and improved.

The legal challenge could in theory horribly backfire. The case has given momentum to an emerging campaign that drug abuse in sport should be criminalised. This has huge implications for sport globally,
but could create the necessary disincentives for athletes to engage in drug abuse which has created what one US Senator has described as a "head in the sand attitude to steroids and human growth hormones" within sport.

A finding of guilt could result not just in a ban for athletes but a period of incarceration too. That could be quite an unintended legacy of the current legal challenge.

This could be Chambers's biggest battle. In considering what it should do, the court will not look at what it would do in the same position as the British Olympic Association finds itself but whether or not in the circumstances it has acted fairly and whether pending the hearing next year the athlete should have the privilege of representing the country.

In determining this, the judge will weigh on the one hand the risk of depriving someone who has previously been found guilty of drug abuse the opportunity of competing in the world's oldest and most famous sporting event and on the other whether if he or she does and he loses the case at the later hearing, the spectre that this could create for the interests of athletics.

It seems that the only certainty is that the result will be the legal equivalent of a photo finish.


Simon McKay is a solicitor advocate and principal of McKay Law in Leeds.