Race Against Me: My Story [Paperback]

I've always been intrigued with Chambers' story and why he felt the need to do what he did, he's like the marmite of athletics, you love him or you hate him, personally i have a lot of respect for the way he has admitted his wrong doings and served his ban to come back as arguably the best british sprinter. He needs to be given another chance instead of being used as some sort of scapegoat and bad example of UK Athletics cutting off its nose to spite its own face.

"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heels that crushed it"

(Mark Twain,' The Great American Novel')

When the Indian matchfixer was exposed by the News of the World you could imagine the rush for current serving professional cricketers to quickly became `no longer friends' with Mazhar Majeed on their facebook accounts, which is exactly what happened to Dwain Chambers when he got the call he had been caught taking performance enhancing drugs. His so-called friends and fellow athletes turned their back on him after he tested positive and Dwain even claims to have thought about suicide. American Antonio Pettigrew did take his own life through shame and depression after receiving a life ban for drugs. No athletes want to be seen sympathising with the sports devil.

`Race against Me', as the ambiguous title suggests, has more than one message to expunge from its controversial author and so the book a good read and the expected hot potato. Dwain Chambers is not only angry with the world because he got caught but because others haven't been caught, and many protected by their athletics federations, meaning Dwain had to take drugs to make the big podiums at the Olympics and the Worlds, where the big paycheques are and the sports biggest problem right now. If the athletes don't break records or perform amazing feats then the crowds don't come and the sponsorship dries up. Dwain could either be the fastest `clean' athlete in the world and earn a decent living on bronze and silver and join Colin Jackson and Steve Cram as a pundit or in the commentary box where he retiree or cheat and chase Olympic and World Gold and all the glory and millions that's come with that. Proof of that was his lucrative Adidas deal, stipulating that if he didn't remain in the top three in the word in the 100m his deal would be halved. This book details how he chased both money and glory and now has nothing.

Dwain is quickly on the defensive in the book and although holding his hands up he is looking for other people to blame for his decision, and others to defend him, including religion, journalists and fellow athletes, and if the athletes have no time for him then he has no time for them. The athletics Lords of Sebastian Coe and Colin Moynihan get both barrels! The only cancellation with Dwain is at least he doesn't cross his chest and kiss the crucifix on the start line before going into the blocks like those cheating Americans.

Respected sports writer Oliver Holt opens up for the defence with the books first chapter to not exactly back Dwain but to point out that the athletics federation only turned on him when he wouldn't walk away from the sport, not so much because he cheated, many times before British athletes have been caught for cheating, but because he wouldn't go quietly and so threatened to expose just how widespread drug taking was and is in athletics, almost a tacit code between athletes in the sport that we will turn a blind eye to cheats as long as you don't get caught, certainly the case in the bad old days. The plausible deniability defence that there's so few positives because there are so few cheats that is trotted out by British Athletics over the years is no longer acceptable and was about to be blown apart by Chambers.

The hate began when he said in an interview that `you couldn't win the big medals without cheating', the whole athletics establishment turning on him thereafter and so game over. Chambers was threatening to blow the lid and when the book finally came out, there were a few nervous `clean' athletes fearing the worse. As it turns out he doesn't name anyone but the insinuation is strong in parts of the book and if you read between the lines the clues are there on just who may have cheated and who knew about Victor Conte's program before it was exposed.

-Little innocent Dwain-

The early days for Dwain were very cliché for a British African-Caribbean boy, an absent father `who did a runner' (very ironic), as Dwain put it, and a disciplined God fearing mother, trying to hold it all together but taking its toll on Dwain's education. But the boy could always run fast and athletics would be his salvation and pulled him away from the gangs and knife crime many kids from this background are sucked into early on in their lives, a junior Chambers soon working his way up through the age groups for sprinting.

Handsome and charming the girls and the nightclubs loved him as much as the local athletics clubs did, soon European and World Junior Champion (the later with a junior WR) and then winning silver in the senior men's European Championships in 1997 just before his 19th birthday. By the time he was twenty he had a BMW, a Staffordshire bull terrier and his own house and had broken the magic ten second barrier too, Linford Christie the only other Brit to do sub-ten.

When Dwain ran 9.97 for bronze in the World Championships he admits the nightlife and the notoriety that had bought him made him a target for a lot of people. He wasn't 100% committed and when he turned down an unexpected offer of a sports scholarship to Harvard he knew he was hot property and should get his head down to chase the big three medals. Its here in the book that racism first raises its ugly head, Dwain mentioning an incident in a nightclub in Cardiff as an example. When out drinking with friends they got a good kicking by a bunch of white supremacist bouncers, as he puts it. But the story takes a bizarre twist when one of the female arresting police officers asks to quite literally take down his particulars in his hotel room when taking a statement, grabbing his groin and undoing her blouse for him to inspect her chest, the power of fame. He even dated David Beckhams publicity shy sister.

-Drugs-

It was the Athens Olympics where Chambers realised he was never going to win the big gold's without a chemical assist, `Pharmacology' as its called, Maurice Greene claiming gold and Tim Montgomery silver in sub 9.90 times. Deciding to up sticks to America to find out why their sprinters were always faster, its here he meets the infamous Victor Conte of the Balco Lab at his training group's stadium in Florida, which included the notorious fellow positive testers in Tim Montgomery and Kelli White (who Chambers had an affair with), Montgomery ending up serving four years in jail on top of his doping ban for money laundering. Chambers claims he was seduced by Conte into believing most medallist are taking drugs and so he would be at a `disadvantage' as a clean athlete and so the drugs needed just to keep the playing field level. What he doesn't articulate is that's what the previous guys on drugs thought and so part of the problem with that nonsense logic. Chambers didn't just take one drug he took a whole cocktail! Conte would organise his complex calendar so to avoid the testers and Chambers would pay 30 grand a year for the privilege, his Lottery money right there. THG (tetrahgdrogstrine), the then infamous undetectable steroid, was the main drug in his system but he also took insulin, EPO and masking agents, seven in total, the `clean and the cream'. These drugs weren't good for your health either and Chambers would have stomach cramps every other night and sometimes on the track. The cocktail could also cause liver damage and `sexual organ shrinkage', Chambers quite literally putting everything on the line. Chambers convinced himself with twisted logic that if THG wasn't on the banned list because it was unheard of and so detectable then in some way it wasn't illegal, the mindset the cheat has to trick himself into. But Dwayne does make a reasonable point at this time in the book that how does a young athlete know what is banned if the lists are so long and complex with those funny names and just a trace element of substances put in some regular foods and drugs can land you in the dock, as proved the case with multi Tour de France winner Alberto Contador.

When Chambers ran 9.96 to win the European 100m gold and then 9.87 in Zurich he knew the drugs were working and so increased the loading. But over- confidence breeds mistakes and when he took his latest batch of drugs to Miami airport a hand was placed firmly on his shoulder and the game was up, the FBI at the airport waiting for him as they had been bugging Conte's and his training group's phones for a while. He wasn't `nicked' there and then and was unaware he was done for but now the testers knew what to test for and the game was up. Dwayne received the dreaded phone call he knew would happen one day. Chambers knew his federation would slaughter him and even the best lawyers couldn't save him, eventually receiving his lifelong Olympic ban and briefly forced out of the sport, where he experimented wit American Football with the Hamburg Seahawks and then the ill advised excursion with Castleford rugby League. He did win the right to compete in 2008 through restraint of trade laws and would win the World Indoors championship in Valencia.

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"Focusing your life on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks to little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential"

(Barak Obama at his famous Chicago speech)
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Any good?

I'm surprised the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year panel didn't short list this as it's really rather readable and very honest, not the usual sanitised biography bore (Marcus Trescothick) you get in this sports genre awards. Read more ›

Its unusual for a sportsman to offer any honest assessment of sport,Im sure he's not being 100% honest about what goes on and what he did but he's 100% more honest than the rest of the sporting world.He suspects most of the other winning athletes were doing the same and it a certainty they are. Its also well written and you do get a sense of what drives top class athletes to do anything they can to get even the smallest advantage. A definate eye opener.