Chambers coach damned

While Dwain Chambers awaits the drugs verdict which could destroy his athletics career, it has been revealed in the United States that the London sprinter's coach has already been damned as a pariah of athletics.

Should Chambers be found guilty of taking the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), he will face a two-year suspension from competition and a life-time ban from the Olympic Games.

But while an independent panel called up by UK Athletics is preparing the result of a disciplinary hearing which should be made public either tomorrow or Wednesday, the shunning of Remi Korchemny offers Chambers a taste of the more personal punishment that could confront him. Korchemny, a 71-year-old Ukrainian now based in California, has been banned from the high school where he has coached elite athletes for the past 15 years.

At another campus Korchemny suffered the indignity of being escorted from the premises by a security guard.

His banishment from mainstream sport does not end there.

Korchemny last week had an invitation to conduct a special running clinic for children withdrawn and he has been dropped as an assistant coach for the US team competing at next month's world indoor championships in Budapest.

Korchemny is one of four men in the United States who have pleaded not guilty to charges of possessing and distributing illegal drugs, as well as misbranding drugs.

Meanwhile, Ashia Hansen will face a huge task when defending her world indoor triple jump title in Budapest next month.

An absentee through injury since winning a second gold medal in Birmingham last March, Hansen made a winning but shaky return at the same venue in Norwich Union Grand Prix last weekend.

Clearing 14.47metres after such a long lay-off was a more than satisfactory comeback.

But the world indoor record holder said: "I wasn't well prepared. I need to go back to training straight away and try to put right what was wrong on the runway."