Wednesday, 14th May
100m World Record holder, Asafa Powell has returned to training after taking two weeks off with a chest muscle injury. He sustained the injury during weight training, but expects to be fully fit by the end of the month. During his absence, fellow Jamaican, Usain Bolt, clocked 9.76 seconds for 100m, just 0.02 seconds outside Powell's record. The pair are expected to compete head-to-head at the Jamaican trials at the end of June. Along with American Tyson Gay, Powell and Bolt are the favourites to contest the Olympic 100m title in Beijing.
Friday, 9th May
After his trial with Castleford Tigers was ended, Dwain Chambers has decided to try to revive his sprinting career. This makes it more likely that he will challenge the British Olympic Association's bye-law 25, under which he has received a life-time ban from Olympic competition. Chambers is committed to continuing his sprint training but, Olympic ban aside, he will find it difficult to make a living from regular competition, since the organisers of Europe's main athletics' meetings have also decided to ban athletes with doping bans since 2003. Chambers has also expressed a desire to become involved with education projects and work with young offenders. Meanwhile, Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, recently appointed to lead a review of UK Athletics' anti-doping policy, is keen to speak to Chambers to find out why he was tempted to take a performance-enhancing drug.
Wednesday, 7th May
Olympic legend Carl Lewis has called on governments around the world to make the use of banned substances in sport a criminal offence. Winner of nine Olympic gold medals, Lewis believes that urgent action is needed for athletics to keep its credibility. With the Beijing Olympics only three months away, a series of doping scandals has undermined confidence in results. At present, former Olympic 100m champion, Marion Jones is in jail and ex-world 100m record holder, Tim Montgomery is awaiting sentence. While their offences do not relate directly to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, their trials revealed that they had been guilty of doping and their crimes involved covering this fact up. With the trial of Trevor Graham - former coach of 2004 100m Olympic champion, Justin Gatlin, who is serving a four-year ban for failing a drugs' test - about to start in San Francisco, athletics is bracing itself for more bad news. The main prosecution witness, Angel Guillermo Heredia is set to accuse Maurice Greene, the Olympic 100m champion in 2000 and current ambassador for the IAAF, of buying performance-enhancing drugs from him in 2003 and 2004. The sprinter strenuously denies the accusation and has never failed a drugs' test. However, the IAAF has asked Green for an explanation and he has appointed a lawyer to formulate an urgent riposte.
Most governments have limited their legislation to the illegal supply and manufacture of performance-enhancing substances and only Italy has made doping a criminal offence. In the USA, leaving sports to sort out their own drugs' problems is a hot topic, following a damning report by Senator George Mitchell into drug abuse in baseball. Carl Lewis believes that criminalising doping will force accused athletes to tell the truth. However, Mitchell feels that by using strict regimes of testing, investigation and education, sports should be able to put their own houses in order.
