Twelve months ago British sprinter Dwain Anthony Chambers attempted to become an NFL star. He attempted valiantly to play in the limelight in America, turn over a new leaf, walk past the transgressions he committed in the sport of track and field and into the promising and quite lucrative sport of tackle football some five time zones and one continent removed from home - and away from critics.
A year later, after having made and then lost out on what was to have been the next stage in his bid to become an NFL star after injuring himself during a practice session, Chambers is attempting to make a comeback into the sport which once hailed him as a hero, and now looks down condescendingly to a man who had cheated his way to the top.
Chambers, the former European Champion over 100m, built his previous athletic success by taking drugs — illegal, performance-enhancing ones which, at the time, were completely undetectable, absolutely unknown and unequivocally wrong to use.
These were BALCO drugs, and having been outed as an associate of Victor Conte and Remi Korchemny, Chambers paid a steep and heavy price for his role in that scandal - one which has mainly been American-based and has involved persons like Marion Jones and Dana Stubblefield - two former athletes who have in recent days both been charged with lying to the same U.S. IRS Agent, Jeff Novitsky, regarding their association to Conte's illegal laboratory in Burlingame, California.
Jones is set to spend six months in prison for her role in that case along with an unrelated check-fraud one; Stubblefield will be sentenced in two months' time.
Chambers, who has never been jailed for a crime many consider relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, has a hill to traverse as he attempts to lace up his spikes and compete for a living - literally and in the figurative sense. No, make that a mountain to climb. He has no less than £180.000 (roughly $360.000) to repay to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for having confessed to previously earning a living on their dime, to to speak.
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