Dwain Chambers, the British sprinter on a comeback after a failed NFL career attempt, qualified for the UK National Indoor Championships 60m on Saturday by posting a winning time of 6,60 seconds at the Birmingham Games.
Chambers, 29, who detoured his athletics career in 2007 following a successful - yet controversial - comeback the previous year from a 2003 performance-enhancing drugs bust, has a tougher challenge ahead of him than attempting to win a race featuring a younger, stronger competitor in 21-year-old Craig Pickering, the 2005 European Junior 100m champion.
Chambers may not even make it to the starting blocks now that he's qualified for next weekend's national championships, because UK Athletics, the athletics governing body of Britain, does not want him to compete.
The 60m dash in Sheffield next weekend is the trials run for the IAAF World Indoor Championships, and the winner will be invited to participate next month in Valencia for Great Britain. Chambers, because he has not been on the official drug-testing register for more than a year, runs the risk of being left off the team.
Meanwhile, in Stuttgart yesterday evening, Sweden's Susanna Kallur, the 2006 European Champion and reigning IAAF Indoor 60m hurdles champion, set a new Swedish record in her speciality, running 7,72 seconds - the second-fastest ever run indoors - at the Sparkassan Cup. It was the second time in less than a week the 26-year-old set a new personal best at this distance.
Russian Lyudmila Narozhilenko, who later became a Swedish national, set the world-record of 7,69 seconds in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 1990.
Kallur set her second-consecutive Swedish record this week, having run 7,75 at the Samsung Galan at Scandinavium in Göteborg, Sweden, on Tuesday evening, and broke Lyudmila Engquist's (formerly Nazorzhilenko) previous national mark of 7,80 seconds.
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