The Electronic Telegraph Sunday 8 July 2001 Owen Slot WHEN Britain's sprinters go into their blocks next weekend in the AAA Championships, it will be as strong a home-grown line-up as we have ever seen. Dwain Chambers will be favourite, though Mark Lewis-Francis might fancy his chances along with the usual Darrens and Jasons. But the one man who thinks he is faster than the lot will be absent - banned from competition. John Skeete's case is an extraordinary one. All drugs cases are, really, but this one involves a police investigation, allegations of extreme foul play from a third party and a 23-year-old talent at the centre of it all who says he can go faster than anyone in the land. And indeed anyone could say that, especially when they're not running, but Skeete's claims are based on brilliant but fleeting evidence, from one astounding afternoon's sprinting last January. It was in the AAA Indoor Championships that he came thundering through, as if from nowhere, into the consciousness of world sprinting. His CV was good but not this good, and in becoming the United Kingdom 60 metres champion, he broke the Scottish record and shattered his personal best. It seemed too good to be true and when he then tested positive for stanozolol, we thought we knew why. His own explanation -that his supplements had been tampered with - appeared far-fetched in the extreme, but then came the endorsement from the UK Athletics disciplinary committee. Skeete had to be dealt the standard two-year ban because the rules insist that each athlete is responsible for anything found in their system, but a statement said that Skeete was "morally innocent as his supplements had been spiked with stanozolol." "Allegations are easy to make," said Colin Ross-Munro QC, the committee chairman, "whereas it's quite exceptional to be able to present such impressive evidence that led us to make such findings of fact in favour of John Skeete." Thus, while the Metropolitan Police continue their investigations and the International Amateur Athletic Federation, the world governing body, deliberate tediously over a date when they can sit down to consider this exceptional evidence, Skeete himself is left in limbo: he is training but not competing, proving to himself that he could be a world-beater but forced, for the time being, to endure the label of a cheat. It was when he arrived to watch some friends compete at a minor meeting in Birmingham recently that he got a taste of life as an outcast. "A lot of guys came over and spoke to me," he says, "but you see others looking, wondering. I just leave them to it. They can say what they want about me, the only thing I have to prove is that I can run faster than them. I'll take care of them on the track." Thus we find him more motivated than ever. This time a year ago, he was strongly considering giving up; a succession of injuries had held him back and after under-performing at the Olympic trials, he told his mother he was quitting. "I didn't really want to come back to athletics," he says, "but everyone around me told me I had to do it. Then this all happened [the drugs suspension] and I say to myself, `I shouldn't have bothered'. So why not walk away now? "I've got a point to prove now. Even if it's just one season of beating everyone and then saying afterwards: that's it, I quit now. Just to show that what I said in the beginning was right, I'll come back. Remember this." Some athletes are beaten and broken by such crises. If Skeete is even bothered, though, he hardly lets you know. His upbringing in London's East End, he says, has been too tough to let such misfortune break his stride. He even manages to be nonchalant when discussing the financial windfall he has missed out on: "Someone said £75,000 is what I lost from the indoor season. I didn't really like hearing that." Tony Hadley, his coach with whom he still trains full time, endorses much of this: "John's gone through a lot of difficulties and he's coped very well. I like his attitude: he works hard, he's very resilient in the head. And there's not a cat in hell's chance of him giving up. Having worked together for just one winter, he knows what he can do now." It is this that excites Skeete. He insists that there is nothing remotely dodgy about his rate of improvement, that it is merely the result of a long period free of injury combined with a lot of hard work under the guise of a coach with whom he was working for the first time. He says he is in shape to run a 100m in 10 seconds flat and only Chambers, of the British sprinters, has managed that this year. "I know I can beat those guys," he says, "and I don't need to take anything to do that. I'm training well, I'm running fast. My time will come again. "My last 40 metres is better than the rest of theirs. The only person as dangerous in the last part of the race is Mark Lewis-Francis. I've got more range than Dwain. And I don't think any of them are as strong as me mentally. There are no secrets to running fast. You'll see: my first season back, I will demonstrate it again." When that will be, we cannot be sure. He has written off this summer season while he awaits the "exceptional circumstances" review of his case by the IAAF council. The IAAF, however, might wait for the Metropolitan Police to finish their own investigation. It was only as a last resort, Skeete says, that he went to the police. "I don't usually go to the police when I've got a problem. I don't really like even talking to them. But I knew they had to be involved. There's a lot more to the case, a lot of things that happened, that I can't talk about. When it's over I'll tell all." It'll make a fascinating tale. Just as interesting, though, will be to see if he can go as fast as he says he can when there is no longer anyone holding him back. Eamonn Condon www.RunnersGoal.com
