Linford Christie's two-year ban from competition for testing positive for the stimulant nandrolone may have officially ended but there is no sign that the athletics community in England is prepared to let someone who was once one of their brightest stars back from the wilderness. On the day that London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, Linford Christie, like the rest of us, was sitting at home, in Gerrards Cross, watching David Beckham hugging Steve Redgrave hugging Tessa Jowell on television. Many may have missed Britain's most decorated athlete when he did not appear on any of the coverage of that joyous time.

'I missed me, too,' he says.

Christie had tried to get involved in some way; he had phoned the organising committee to see if maybe he could run a leg of the torch relay that preceded the Athens Games, which ended with Steve Redgrave lighting an optimistic flame in the Mall. Christie's telephone request was greeted with embarrassed silence.

Christie says

Eventually they rang back and said they could not see a place for me, because they were really full up. They were so full up that they found some places for page three girls, or whatever, to carry the torch, but obviously not for Olympic champions.

Sebastian Coe, the Tory peer and double Olympic champion, who led the bid, had announced earlier in his column that he found Christie "boorish" and it was clear that, even though the two-year ban had ended, the bid team were working hard to wipe Linford Christie from London's Olympic memory.

Christie maintains his innocence claiming that the tests were flawed and that he had no reason to get involved with doping, in short "why would he risk everything when it no longer mattered?" A argument that the British governing body accepted but the IAAF did not.

So why would he risk everything when it no longer mattered? Well, a simple answer might be that he was having difficulty accepting the fact that his abilities were failing with age.

Christie has long felt that the athletic establishment was stacked against him. His team-mate Derek Redmond observed: 'Linford is a very well balanced athlete: he has a chip on both shoulders.' It may have been real or just Christie's perception but like a number of athletes Christie appears to have drawn strength from his adversity. It was the fire in his belly that drove him to win, whether it also drove him to a "win at all costs" attitude that included drug taking who can tell.

Regardless of whether he did or did not take the drug his involvement with elite athletics seems over as completely as his friendship with his long term team mate Sebastian Coe. They may never have been real close but there is a gulf between them now

(via The Guardian)