I’m probably more famous now thanwhen I did anything on

nandrolone test ruined European 200m

champion Doug Walker’s career and his

life. Now, with the Commonwealth Games

just months away, it is time to confront

his demons. And to start running again

It WAS three years, almost to the day, since I had last met up with Doug Walker in London. Then, as now, we met at a swanky five-star hotel off Park Lane. This time it was over coffee. Then, in November 1998, it was at a flash awards dinner, in a ballroom brim-full with 200 of the country’s finest athletes and a motley collection of journalists, all celebrating the magnificent nine gold medals won by British track stars at that year’s European championships.

That night, Doug Walker represented two of those golden achievements - at 200 metres and as part of the 4x100 metres relay team - and he was a guest at my table. I spent the evening basking in reflected glory.

It was one of the last gala evenings in which Walker was able to enjoy his new-won fame and celebrity. A few days later, after training on a chill Edinburgh December night, a drug-testing official called on Walker, asking for a sample of urine. That sample, when analysed, revealed the presence of nandrolone, a banned anabolic steroid. Walker, who has been steadfast in the maintenance of his innocence, has been living with the consequences ever since.

Three years on, and Walker now goes unrecognised. After our interview, he

happily and helpfully spends an hour with our photographer in a busy street. Not a workman, taxi driver or passer-by knows that he is the reigning European 200m champion, an athletics gold medallist in Britain’s

most successful sport. Doug Walker is the

forgotten man of British athletics.

While Walker has had to serve his time, kick his heels and make the best of it, others who were judged to have committed a

similar offence have survived, even thrived.

One managed to continue to present

children’s television programmes even

after testing positive for steroids, while another has appeared on the front cover of Athletics Weekly magazine to talk about their "nandrolone nightmare" after serving just six months of the regulation two-year ban. Big cash prizes on the Grand Prix

circuit, together with appearances with John and Ally on A Question of Sport, have come and gone.

All that, the fame and the fortune, have bypassed Doug Walker. "I never

got the chance to get used to it, or to enjoy it," he says of his fleeting fame as

an athlete.

Although his two-year ban expired a year ago, the race-rustiness, allied with injury, meant that the 2001 track season saw Walker fail to re-establish himself among Britain’s elite.

Walker has since seen his Lottery funding cut, he has been forced to sell his flat and move back with his parents, and after three years as an unemployed international athlete, he is left to wonder where his next physio fee is coming from.

It has forced Walker to reassess his entire attitude to his sport. "Since the ban was lifted, there’s been no sense of relief," he says. "I am not finding it fun, and that is strange."

It means that next year, the year when he hopes to defend his European 200m title in Munich and represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, could be Dougie Walker’s final season in athletics.

"I’m probably more famous now than when I did anything on the track," Walker says. "That upsets me a wee bit. All I want to do is just race. I’m always going to be stuck with this name. Every time there is a drug case referred to in the newspapers, my name is mentioned now. I don’t want to be associated with this for the next 30 or 40 years - all these people look back at my career and think, ‘Oh, that’s that Dougie Walker’, sort of thing. I need to get that resolved. I’m not comfortable with it at all.

"I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t hanging over me, I suppose. I can’t remember what it feels like not to have something sort of haunting me. Those last two years were supposed to be my prime couple of years. There I was, the European 200m champion, and a white guy, too, running the 200m on the Grand Prix circuit in 1999. God, I’d have made a killing from races in Europe, just from the novelty value. Instead, nothing."

Walker concedes that financial realities, as much as anything else, could force him to give up international athletics. "I gave myself three years as a full-time athlete to really make it, and in 1998 I was ahead of where I wanted to be. I’d hoped to make the final of the Europeans, then the final at the worlds in 1999, and then Olympic year."

His soft-spoken voice trails away, as

Walker considers what might have been, especially for an Olympic 200m final that was missing Michael Johnson, Maurice Greene and Ato Boldon, and which was won by another, unheralded "white guy", the Greek, Kostas Kederis, in 20.09.

"It was frustrating, because they were the Olympics I was aiming at. I never thought we’d see the Olympics won in 20.09," says Walker, "I always expected it to be won in 19.7, 19.8. Yet sub-20.2 would have got a medal. Kederis doesn’t hold the same fear factor for me as the likes of Johnson or Greene or Boldon. Yeah, that was very frustrating."

Walker, whose 20.35sec lifetime best is ranked only eighth in Britain, and second in Scotland ("I was hoping to get Allan Wells’ record, too"), knows that his route back to the top of European sprinting is going to be tough. "I can’t just go back at the level I left at. It’s a pain in the backside having to climb all the way back again, but I want to be remembered for my running ..."

Before his comeback race earlier this year, Walker had spoken to me of his "demons of doubt", because he had not raced for such a long time. "It’s going to weigh heavily on me," he said. "I’ve still got the ability, but you have to have a level of fitness before you can get that competitive edge. Once you’re really fit, the mental state takes care of itself."

But Walker never even got the chance to get back into the racing groove last summer, as injury was added to the insult of his two-year ban. It is this unresolved physical frailty, as much as his problems in re-establishing himself, which could curtail the career of someone who was once regarded as one of the most promising all-round sprinters Scotland has ever seen. For Walker’s 31.56sec British and Commonwealth record for 300m was regarded by many as hinting at an untapped talent over a full lap of the track, suggesting that he might have the sprinting range from 100 to 400 to make him a latterday Eric Liddell.

Liddell, of course, was the Chariots of Fire sprinter who refused to compete in the 100m at the 1924 Paris Olympics because it would have required him to go against his strict religious beliefs and race on a Sunday. So he entered the 400m, and won Olympic gold at that event instead. But now we may never know the extent of Walker’s talent. If the doping case was not a set-back enough, Walker has been plagued with long-term injuries that have curtailed the training he has been able to do. "It was three years ago, around the time that the drugs thing happened. I felt a pain in my left foot. With every training session it was getting worse and worse and worse, and eventually it was diagnosed as a stress fracture."

For a 200-metre sprinter, who drives out of his blocks and tries to reach top speed in the first 90 metres of a race that starts on a sharp bend, a fracture to his left foot - the one on the inside of the track, the one that takes the full force of his powerful pounding with every stride - can be as big a handicap as a Tour de France cyclist trying to win his race with only one wheel.

"I was told to rest, but I didn’t. It didn’t heal, so I rested it, and it didn’t heal. Because I wasn’t competing, it didn’t seem such an issue to get it fixed at the time. I wish I’d done more about it then. After a year of resting it, when it still wasn’t healed, the doctors said that they would have to pin it."

Although improved, Walker’s foot still gave him trouble throughout his build-up to and during his short-lived comeback last summer. "After the GB v USA match in July, I just couldn’t run at all." Another operation in August was needed, but Walker has still been troubled by this nagging injury - "I’d rest it for eight weeks, come back, train for two weeks, and just break down again" - and he was due to visit his specialist later on the day of the interview to investigate the

possibility of a new fracture.

As he relates his medical records, there is a sense that this misfortune, heaped upon all his other problems, has really managed to grind Doug Walker down. "If I’d managed to carry on running this summer, pain-free, I think I could have run a respectable 20.8, something like that. But it never really worked out."

His first outdoor race after the ban was at a low-key, British League match on a chilly, breezy May afternoon in north London. "I didn’t feel any pressure," he says, "I just felt noticed, I suppose. There were a lot of well-wishers there, and you had to acknowledge them, of course, but really I just wanted to get on with it, and it’s never nice racing when you know you’re not running as well as you’d like to."

Ask him if he feels like the forgotten man of the British athletics team, and Walker - who is modest enough about his own

abilities to have a reasonable line in self-deprecating humour - fires back: "I wish I was."

There is also a sense that, whatever the rights and the wrongs of his own case,

justice has been rougher on him than other British internationals, such as Linford Christie, Mark Richardson and Marlon Devonish, all of whom had adverse tests for nandrolone - just like Walker - yet all suffered much more lenient sentences than the Scot.

Walker acknowledges that being the first high-profile case probably did him no favours, and that, as more cases came to light, the authorities seemed to change their stance. Walker, of course, was initially cleared by UK Athletics, the British governing body, but had his ban enforced by the International Association of Athletics Federations.

In Christie’s case, the former Olympic 100m champion was able to compete for six months after his positive test - at an indoor meeting in Germany in February 1999, just a few weeks after Walker’s drug test. Once news of his positive case was leaked, Christie promptly announced his retirement from competition, but continued to coach and carried on with his TV work.

Training partners Devonish and Richardson, like Walker, both endorsed the products of Maximuscle, the nutritional supplements manufacturer and supplier whose product range also includes banned steroids, and who were among the prime suspects

for the spate of nandrolone positives in 1998-99. No one has ever been able to prove that Maximuscle products used by athletes testing positive for nandrolone were the source of the banned drug, however.

Meanwhile, research at the Olympic-accredited drug-testing laboratory in Cologne, Germany, has found the non-nandrolone products of 16 different companies to be contaminated with the anabolic steroid - none of the companies have been named and shamed, but the drug testers are satisfied that such contamination would be enough to see an innocent athlete test positive for the drug. As a result, the warning has gone out to athletes around the world to avoid taking any supplements. It is all too late for Walker, though.

"These days, I just take a few multi-vitamins from Holland and Barrett," he says.

The fact that Maximuscle were recently fined 1500 in court for mislabelling

another of their products is also little

consolation for Walker, who has had to sit back and watch as other athletes have

avoided bans or had their suspensions reduced as a result of the legal and scientific work his case began to establish.

In Marlon Devonish’s case, there was no ban at all. In Mark Richardson’s case, while his lawyers and officials debated the issues, he was allowed to compete throughout 2000, pocketing an estimated 100,000 in appearance fees and Grand Prix winnings in the process, before his ban was finally applied a year ago. It was not long, however, before the IAAF opted to commute Richardson’s ban to just six months under its ‘exceptional circumstances’ rule, the Windsor runner getting back on the track in June as if nothing had happened.

"I’m not bitter about Mark or any of the others," Walker says. "They did what they had to do. I just wish I could have been

treated more leniently, in light of all the doubts and debate about nandrolone that came to light after my test.

"I think I’ve probably suffered more than any of the others. I suppose it is one of the problems with being the first big case. Just bad timing. But I can’t lie: of course it

rankles now the way some people are

treated, told that they can give a wee talk to a few kids and then be allowed back early."

Walker’s response when he was asked, recently, to give such an ‘educational’ talk on the perils of drugs in sport is not printable in a family newspaper. He is therefore left to look towards next year, and attempt to rediscover the form that saw him lead a British clean sweep of the European 200m medals on a famous, muggy night in Budapest nearly four years ago.

"It’s the Europeans I want to go for, more than anything else," he says. "I want to be able to defend my title. I just want to

have a clear run at it. If I can get the injury fixed by December and then have six months uninterrupted, that should be enough time.

"I just want to have one final crack at it, find out how well I can run. I’m not saying that I think I could win in competition, or anything like that, I ‘d just like to feel that I was competitive and enjoying it again. To be enjoying it, I reckon I’d have to be

running 20.5 or 20.6, which may not

even be good enough to get me in the

international team. But I can’t just keep doing it otherwise, I can’t carry on being skint all the time, living with my parents, with an overdraft.

"I’ll be 29 next year, so I’ll have to start thinking about starting to do something else with my life." n

naughty nanos

Linford ChristiE: The 1992 Olympic 100m gold medallist tested positive for nandrolone after an indoor 60m race in Germany in February 1999. No action was taken until news of the positive test was leaked to a French paper six months later. Christie’s nandrolone readings were 20 times higher than Walker’s. He maintained his innocence, but was banned for two years by the IAAF. He then announced his retirement from competitive athletics, just ahead of 40th birthday.

CJ Hunter: The world shot put champion recorded nandrolone levels even higher than Christie in three separate tests in 2000. But still the US did not suspend their athlete - one of over 20 Americans to test positive in the 18 months before the Sydney Olympics, but who went unsanctioned. When Hunter’s positives were announced in Sydney, he retired immediately. Despite initially having the support of wife Marion Jones, she has now left the 200lb shot putter for another woman.

Jaap Stam: The Lazio man is one of more than a dozen Serie A players who tested positive for nandrolone. Others include Edgar Davids and Fernando Couto. Stam says he simply took vitamin pills given to him by the Dutch team doctor. A police investigation into doping in Italian football continues.

Mark Richardson: Like Walker, the English 400m man endorsed Maximuscle nutrition supplements. He tested positive in October 1999, but astute handling of his legal case saw him allowed to compete, except at the Olympics. Richardson thrived on the European circuit, and accumulated 100,000 that season. Received a two-year ban last December, but was free to compete again by June after agreeing to undertake a series of talks on the perils of using supplements.

Doug Walker:

Life and Times

Born Inverness, 28 July 1973

education Played rugby for Scottish Schools. Graduate

of Heriot-Watt University

in estate management.

Championship record

1994: Commonwealth Games, 200m semi-final.

1997: World championships, 200m semi-finals; 4x100m relay 3rd. European Cup, 4x100m relay 3rd.

UK championsips, 200m 1st.

1998: European championships, 200m 1st; 4x100m relay 1st.

Commonwealth Games, 200m 8th. European Cup, 200m 1st; 4x100m relay 1st.

AAA championships, 200m 1st.

Best times:

100m: 10.01w 1998

200m: 20.35 1998

300m: 31.56 1998 European and Commonwealth record

400m: 46.95 1996

1998: Doug Walker became the first big-name athlete to be tested positive for nandrolone.