On Wednesday we’ll hear whether Dwain Chambers has managed to get an injunction lifting his Olympic ban for drug cheating offences. I’ve no sympathy at all with Chambers – it’ll be a depressing day if he does manage to win, and will make the Olympics even less worth watching than it will be anyway.
But if like me you’re interested in how his legal argument runs, have a look at this Times article from the other week which suggests his claim may combine public and private law arguments, the argument being (a) that the British Olympic Committee, in imposing a lifetime Olympic ban on drugs cheats, has gone beyond the harmonized sanctions laid down in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Code and is therefore beyond the BOA’s powers; and (2) that the lifetime ban amounts to an unjustified restraint of Chambers’s trade and so is an unenforceable term in the contract between them and him. There’s also this post from March on the Global Administrative Law blog from NYU Law School which is the best summary I’ve seen of the issues.
Here’s the BOA’s “eligibility bye law” that’s being questioned, and the WADA Code: article 10.2 is the key provision.
I’m not going to give a view on the merits, but I do think all this points to unnecessary weakness in global anti-doping rules. Why on earth anyone should think a two-year ban is sufficient, I have no idea; it seems to me obvious that drugs cheats should be banned from sport for life. But if WADA and its members even accepted my view as a reasonable one, then the Code ought to contain clear provisions permitting national associations from imposing stricter sanctions than those in the Code. Finally, I think the BOA has been silly in accepting a rule-based approach to who it must select, based on who wins the trials. If it had retained discretion, then it could choose not to select Chambers even if he weren’t subject to a ban.
Although not strictly speaking connected to the law here, one might also question how any sporting body can be forced to select any one individual for a national team? It is probably a (rather foolish ) BOA bylaw that the winners of the Olympic trials are automatically selected. If that is the problem, surely this is bylaw that needs to change? I can’t imagine the England soccer or Rugby League teams being selected ‘automatically’ on the basis of their performance in one trial match. Also, the health of the sport’s future is also something, surely, that a governing body should be entitled to consider when selecting a squad? If they decide, whatever the legalities, that selecting someone the wrong side of 30 in what will be in any event his last Olympics is a negative, as against choosing an up-and-coming 19 year old who did not win the trials, why shouldn’t they?
I agree, your Lordship. That’s what I meant about a rule-based system for selection. The BOA could usefully move away from that, I think – it encourages the belief that selection is a “right” on some level.
Discussing drug cheats on another blog, someone pointed out that it is fairly easy to ‘nobble’ an athlete. Creams are available that contain steroids; placing these in an athlete’s shoes or similar could enable the favourite in a race to be disqualified leaving a long odds second to win.
(Depressing, isn’t it?).
Well, now we know and Dwain will have to buy his noodles somewhere else this summer. Seems like the judge implied that the law has no business interfering in a sporting body’s rules?