Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson wants a zero-tolerance approach to drug cheats and believes they should receive lengthy suspensions.
But the former Paralympian says she will be absolutely impartial when she has to chair a review into UK Athletics' anti-doping policy. While UKA's hands are legally tied over the selection of Dwain Chambers for next month's World Indoor Championships in Valencia, they intend to tighten the rules to avoid a repeat.
UKA's chief executive Niels de Vos believes they should have the right to select who they want and not be hampered by the current selection criteria. Grey-Thompson said: "I suppose everybody's got their own personal views about drugs in sport; mine is that once an athlete has been caught and gone through the legal process, they should receive a long ban. However, I have experience from sitting on different committees, such as those making (decisions over) Lottery panel funding, of being totally impartial in my decisions."
She believes the enforced selection of former drugs cheat Chambers necessitates the UKA having rules which cannot be legally challenged. Chambers, who returned to the sport last month and had not been drug-tested for over a year, was, in UKA's opinion, ineligible to represent his country for at least another 12 months. But the International Association of Athletics Federations declared that, under its competition and anti-doping regulations, he could.
Chambers' win in last Sunday's 60 m trials left UKA with little option but to include him otherwise, they could have faced legal action. Not including him might have meant the case going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The selectors, who stressed on Monday that they did not want Chambers in the team, decided that he met their selection criteria. The task facing Grey-Thompson and her panel is to ensure that, in future, there are no loopholes the UKA will formulate plans to exclude drugs cheats from representing their country again.
