Form guide shows Chambers' only fear need be the courtroom

Really, m'lud? The country's top sprinters will be doing their damnedest this weekend to make a nonsense of the widespread assumption that Chambers qualifying comfortably at Birmingham's Alexander Stadium will be the straightforward bit in the drug offender's bid to fight his British Olympic Association ban.

As Mr Justice Mackay pointed out, failure by Chambers to win or be runner-up would render "academic" his bid next Wednesday to win the injunction which would allow him to compete in Beijing. Certainly, there are a few sprinters lining up in tomorrow night's heats at the start of the threeday championships who will fancy they can still turn this notorious comeback trail into a 10second dead end.

Take rivals like Craig Pickering and Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, who have both made it clear how unhappy they would be should Chambers, still banned under a BOA bylaw after serving a two-year suspension for testing positive for the designer steroid THG in 2003, end up depriving another British sprinter of a place in the team.

Pickering, the European Indoor silver medallist, has signed a petition from leading athletes, including Sir Steve

Redgrave, backing the BOA's lifetime bans for drugs cheats while world junior champ Aikines-Aryeetey (left), who's desperate to go to the Games for the experience before

2012, believes Chambers' presence is "unfair" on his competitors.

Yet even if indignation fuels their challenge, this pair, who have both struggled with injuries of late, can realistically not be expected to upset Chambers. So the main men charged with coming to the BOA's rescue will be Tyrone Edgar and the evergreen Marlon Devonish.

Devonish, the 32-year-old Olympic sprint relay gold medallist, has raced sparingly but impressively this summer, clocking 10.08sec in Oslo, while Edgar, the Los Angeles-based Londoner, is confident after recording

10.06sec in Geneva in May and winning the European Cup 100m in Annecy.

Yet the form book still points unerringly to Chambers. After shaking off the false start of an absurd rugby league career with Castleford, he has simply improved with every race this summer to the point where his two European runs in three days recently - 10.06sec in Biberach and 10.05sec in Sofia - identified an athlete in a different class to his pursuers.

Remarkably, it also showed how much he's changed from his days as a BALCO laboratory guinea pig. Instead of being the power-packed muscleman looking almost bow legged in his fast finishes, his strength is now in his jetheeled start and the precision of his technique.

And unpalatable as it will be to those desperate to see him never compete for Britain ever again, the 30-year-old has shown himself already this year, medalling at the World Indoor Championships in the face of such widespread opprobrium, to still be the most mentally tough, competitive and experienced sprinter in the country.

Except that this weekend will find him facing a peculiar pressure. It could only take one poor start and one thirdplaced finish, though, to find Chambers deprived of any such luxury.

The likelihood though is that, come Monday when the team is announced, Chambers will have made the top two and left selectors with the headache they've been dreading all year.

UK Athletics officials appear to accept he can't be stopped on a British track now, only in the courtroom.