Dwain Chambers to start at the MONDO Keien Meeting

Translation and quotes added by: Stephan Kreykamp
MONDO Keien Meeting
March 25, 2009

European indoor Champion Dwain Chambers will start at the 16th edition of the
Mondo Keien Meeting in Uden, the Netherlands. The competition will be held on
the evening of the 27th of June, and is a topmeeting in the national league
sponsored by SPAR.

The signing of a top sprinter was a priority for the organisation. Ever since
the rebuilding of the track into a MONDO surface, the organisation has had huge
improvements of their track records.

The goal of the organisation is to break the all comers record for the 100m in
the Netherlands that has been held by Leroy Burrell who ran 10.08 in Hengelo
during the FBK Games (Grand Prix meet) in 1994.

Dwain Chambers seems the right man for that task.

Chambers won the European indoor title over 60m in a convincing style and broke
the European record in the semi final lowering the new area record to 6.42, the
third fastest time anyone ever ran over 60m indoors.

The British sprinter has a personal best of 9.97 seconds over 100m, a time with
which he won a bronze medal at the World Championships in Seville 1999.
Chambers is a controversial athlete. The day after his European title he
released his book Race Against Me in which he admitted to doping a few
years ago.

Patrick van de Rijdt, athletes' liaison and responsible for inviting athletes,
shares the same thoughts as Charles van Commenee, who backed up his sprinter,
stating that everyone deserves a second chance.

Van de Rijdt: "We have invited Dwain Chambers because of his ability to run a
fast time over 100m, not because of any book he has written.

"He shows character by openly admitting he took doping a few years ago. Dwain has
shown his remorse for those acts and has served his sentence. The doping rules
are clear, once an athlete has served his time, he is free to run again,
otherwise their would be no point into giving him a two year ban in the first
place. Then they should just ban him for the rest of his life. I believe in
giving someone a second chance.

"I am against the use of doping, if the ban for doping would be 4 years, I would
not invite such an athlete for that amount of time, but in this case I feel we
should give Dwain a chance to show the world how fast he can run over 100m
without the use of doping."