How the 'Finsbury Flyer' crashed and burned

At 24, he was captain of a successful athletics team that was among the best in the world, a man who was going to help deliver the biggest prize in world sport to Britain.

There to promote London's fledging bid to host the 2012 Olympics he had every reason to believe that a glittering career was being mapped out for him.

Three months previously he had won the European Championship 100 metres and followed that by equalling Linford Christie's UK record of 9.87sec. This was an appearance squeezed in while on a rare visit home from the United States, where he was spending increasing amounts of time.

Born in Islington, North London and brought up on a council estate, Chambers had a reputation as being affable off the track but charged up at major athletics meetings.

A fan of rapper 50 Cent, 'bling' and designer clothes, he was beloved of sponsors. He was nicknamed the 'Finsbury Flyer'.

His good looks were a feature of campaigns for adidas and helped contribute to an annual salary of more than £1 million, boosted by the fact he could charge meeting promoters £25,000 every time he stepped on the track.

A keen motorcycle fan, with an impressive collection of top-of-therange machines, he was able to pretty much indulge his childhood fantasies. 'Yeah, man, life is good,' he said at the time.

Speed had always been in Chambers' blood. His older sister Christine had finished eighth in the 100m at 1987 European Junior Championships. But her achievements were soon left in the slow lane by her brother. He first came to prominence in 1997, when he set a world junior record of 10.06sec to win the European junior title.

So keen were the national federation to promote him as the bright young new face of the sport that he was paraded before the media at that year's World Championships in Athens and great things were predicted for him. He was quickly snapped up by Nuff Respect, the management company founded and owned by Christie, then the unsullied 1992 Olympic 100m champion.

Cracks soon began to appear in the relationship, though. Chambers was coached by Mike McFarlane, a former rival of Christie's and one of the most respected figures in the sport.

Christie coached Darren Campbell, Chambers' biggest rival in Britain. When Campbell beat Chambers to claim the European title in Budapest in 1998, Christie celebrated wildly in the BBC commentary box.

Chambers reacted with petulance, insulting a young Hungarian volunteer with a string of obscenities as he collected his kit. The relationship between Christie and Chambers ended in the courts with the youngster agreeing to pay compensation to his manager in a row over a kit deal.

By then Chambers had joined a new agency, Stellar Athletics, headed by Christie's bitterest rival, John Regis.

The management group, part of the multi-million pound football empire run by Jonathan Barnett, who also represented Chelsea and England defender Ashley Cole, introduced a new aggressive approach to athletics management and they soon arranged for Chambers Chambers to be trained in the U.S. by Remi Korchemny, a Ukraine-born trainer of high repute based on his work with a youthful Valery Borzov, the 1972 Olympic 100 and 200m champion. McFarlane was left at home.

It was Korchemny who introduced Chambers to Victor Conte, the owner of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).

Conte, a former bass guitarist who had worked with Herbie Hancock, put the Londoner on a 'nutrition programme' that included a cocktail of banned substances, including the designer anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) that was to lead to Chambers testing positive in August 2003 just a few weeks before he finished fourth in the 100m at the 2003 world championships in Paris.

Since then Chambers has drifted.

He has proved to be an unreliable guest on a string of TV reality shows, including walking out of Hell's Kitchen after Gordon Ramsay swore at him.

He flirted briefly last year with American Football, playing in the NFL Europa for the Hamburg Sea Devils. That proved to be a disaster. One coach said: 'He was great at running like the wind, but he couldn't catch a thing. It was embarrassing.'

Chambers may still be able to run like the wind but now the embarrassment rests with British sport.

The only certain thing in Chambers' life at the moment is that London 2012 have no role for him.