Dwain Chambers happy to play the villain

Mar 13 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

Being cast as the villain is not many people’s idea of fun, but Dwain Chambers sees it as the best thing he can do. Stuart Rayner talks redemption to a reformed drugs cheat

DWAIN Chambers is a publicity magnet who keeps athletics reporters in a living. In 2002, the sprinter was European Athlete of the Year. It is a reputation he is working hard to regain – but Chambers is more likely to be cast as a pantomime villain.

Luckily, it is a job he is happy to take on.

In the week the pantomime reached Newcastle, Chambers has been in the papers more than any Big Brother Z-lister could dream of.

At the weekend, he won the European Indoor Championships 60m, just 0.04secs off the European record he set the previous day. He was still left out of Great Britain’s World Championships 4x100m relay team – a decision painted as pragmatism but which underlined his pariah status.

Yesterday it was revealed he has revived his infamous partnership with Victor Conte.

Conte got him into this mess in the first place. The founder of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative introduced him to “The Clear” and “The Cream” – the performance-enhancing drugs tetrahydrogestrinone and HGH (human growth hormones). It earned Conte four months in jail – and Chambers a two-year competition ban in 2003 and a lifetime Olympic suspension.

Working with Conte again – on a high-tech breathing device to legally boost red blood cells – was bound to set tongues wagging. So was writing Race Against Me, the book he was in Newcastle to promote yesterday.

“I’m sure in time it will pass,” he says. “I’ve just got to keep on believing in myself. I’m good at pulling out performances. Unfortunately we have to keep on going into the past. But time will be the healer of all wounds. If they want medals, I’m able to get that, if they want a brighter image for the sport, we need to stop talking about it.

“It (the book) is pretty much what people know already. There are a few bits people will have no idea took place but the main content is what happened and the world knows that.

“What we (Conte and he) are trying to do is send out a message that we’re out to help clean up the sport.

“We helped ruin it, so we’re in a position to try to get it back. I’m not in it to try to beat the system. We did that, it didn’t work.”

There is nothing phoney about Chambers, there cannot be. His only way of remaining an athlete is by laying himself bare.

Some are lukewarm, others hostile. As he sits in Waterstones in Newcastle next to the “True Crime” section, the queue for signed copies of his book carries no threat of writers’ cramp.

It is notoriety, not personal popularity, Chambers must trade on. But trade on it he must.