Brit Brown turns back on UK for Canada

Losing his place last week on Britain's World Class Performance programme, which supports athletes with Lottery money, was the final straw. He plans now to bid for a place in Canada's team next year.

'This decision has been long overdue,' said Brown in an email announcing his change of allegiance.

Brown, 36, British record holder at 10,000 metres and a one-time European cross-country champion, could claim to be the current Olympic No 1 at marathon, given his finishes at the previous two Games.

He is the best aggregate performer over the two races in terms of combined times and places, but he has nothing to show for it because in Sydney he missed a medal by seven seconds and in Athens he was 15 seconds away from a podium finish.

Brown, a three-time Olympian from Sheffield, has lived on Victoria Island in British Columbia since soon after he ran there for England at the 1994 Commonwealth Games.

'If you invest in people for three years, it makes no sense to take away that investment just nine months before the occasion in which you have been investing,' said George Gandy, his British coach for 16 years.

'Losing the Lottery support was the final blow but he has been feeling a growing alienation with the British system for some time.

He feels he has become a victim of a system imposed on athletics by UK Sport which treats all people in all events the same.

'Marathon runners are very different people. Four years for them is the equivalent of three months in the life of the sprinter. The system is not flexible enough to understand that.'

Brown, who last ran for Britain in 2006, has withdrawn from the team to run in the Ekiden Relays in Japan next week, clearing his way to immediate eligibility for Canada.

IOC president Jacques Rogge has called for swifter action from international federations who have been slow to implement the World Anti- Doping Agency code.

He said: 'Partners of WADA have to do a lot and have to do it fast.'