Pistorius and Chambers back in the running for Beijing

Chambers, having revealed all his secrets about drugs to Britain's anti-doping authority, confirmed yesterday that he would compete at July's Olympic trials in Birmingham. Should he do enough to make the team, he would then go to the High Court to challenge his life ban from selection under the British Olympic Association's constitution.

Beijing hope: Oscar Pistorius

More embarrassing still to the athletics family is the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision to let double amputee Pistorius appeal against his ban, imposed by the International Association of Athletic Federations in January after evidence that the South African's prosthetic limbs gave him an unfair advantage.

It means that if Pistorius can achieve the 400metres qualifying time of 45.55sec in the next three months, the IAAF will be unable to prevent him competing in the Olympic Games as well as the Paralympics, the first amputee who would have done so on the track.

He needs to reduce his best time by a second and his first serious opportunity may come next month at one of the IAAF's own Golden League meetings, in Berlin or Oslo. He ran in a B race at one in Rome last year.

'I look forward to continuing my quest to qualify for the Olympics,' said Pistorius, 21. 'I hope this silences the crazy theories circulating about my having an unfair advantage.'

The IAAF tested Pistorius in laboratory conditions last November in Cologne.

Scientists there decided he had a considerable advantage. Pistorius himself obtained contrasting opinions from American experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

A CAS panel of three international lawyers ruled the IAAF had failed to prove contravention of its competition rules which forbid artificial aids.

'On the basis of the evidence brought by the experts called by both parties, the panel was not persuaded that there was sufficient evidence of any metabolic advantage in favour of the double amputee using the Cheetah Flex-Foot,' said a CAS judgment.

The panel emphasised its verdict applied only to Pistorius and only to the particular prosthesis he uses.

'The panel does not exclude the possibility that, with future advances in scientific knowledge, the IAAF might in future be in a position to prove the existing Cheetah Flex-Foot model provides Oscar Pistorius with an advantage over other athletes,' it added.

Pistorius had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old after being born with deformed fibulas. Nine months after he took up track he won 200m gold at the 2004 Paralympic Games.

Last year he finished second against able-bodied athletes in the South African championships but, with only three months before the Beijing Olympic entry deadline, his best chance of competing at the Games is probably in London in 2012.

At almost the same moment CAS announced the verdict on Pistorius, Chambers' lawyer Nick Collins revealed he would start proceedings to give the sprinter a chance of making the British Olympic team.

Collins has already started a challenge to the BOA's lifetime ban on selection on behalf of shot-putter Carl Myerscough, who was banned in 1999.