Athletics chief defends British runner's trip to Gatlin camp
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Your support makes all the difference.Dave Collins, the Performance Director of UK Athletics, has defended the decision to allow Britain's World 100 and 200m youth champion Harry Aikines-Aryeetey to spend a week training with Justin Gatlin's group in South Carolina earlier this year.
"I'm concerned about the situation with Gatlin in terms of the sport, let alone anything else," Collins said. "But can Harry and his coach go and see what other guys elsewhere are doing? That's essential, surely". Although he stepped back from saying he would sanction the same trip again - "let's cross that bridge when we come to it" - he insisted that such efforts should be made. "These are the guys we have to match and exceed," he said.
Dwain Chambers, whose European 100m title of four years ago was stripped from him last month in the wake of his doping suspension, has been offered the chance to regain it in the Championships that start in Gothenburg a week today.
Chambers was deemed fit enough to be one of 23 names added to the British team on Saturday despite the fact that he had not run at the previous evening's Norwich Union Grand Prix at Crystal Palace because of the thigh injury that forced him to withdraw from the final of the European trials.
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