Portal:Sport of athletics/Selected biography/26
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Dwain Anthony Chambers (born 5 April 1978) is a British track sprinter. He has won international medals at World and European levels and is one of the fastest European sprinters in the history of athletics. His primary event is the 100 metres, with a best of 9.97 seconds, which ranks him fifth on the British all-time list. He is the Former European record holder for the 60 metres and 4×100 metres relay events with 6.42 seconds and 37.73 s respectively.
Chambers ran a 100 m world junior record of 10.06 s in 1997 and became the youngest ever world medallist in the event at the 1999 World Championships, taking the bronze. On his Olympic début at the 2000 Sydney Olympics he was the best European performer in fourth place. He broke the 10-second barrier twice at the 2001 World Championships. In 2003 he received a two-year athletics ban after testing positive for THG, a banned performance-enhancing drug and was stripped of the 100 m European title and record he achieved in 2002.
Chambers returned to competition in June 2006 and won gold with his teammates in the 4×100 m at the 2006 European Championships. He tried other sports, including a spell with the Hamburg Sea Devils of the NFL Europa league and a rugby league trial with Castleford. Sprinting success came over 60 m when he won silver at the 2008 World Indoor Championships, gold at the 2009 European Indoors, and became world champion at the 2010 World Indoor Championships.
Due to his doping ban, he was barred from the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, and much of the European racing circuit, from 2006 to 2012. The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned his lifetime Olympic ban, deeming it non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code, and he competed in the 2012 London Olympics. He produced a ghost-written autobiography with writer Ken Scott, Race Against Me, in 2009.
Still competing at the age of 45, he set a new indoor M45 60m world recordand reached the semi-finals in the UK Athletics Indoor Championships. Outside of Athletics, he is an athletics coach and public speaker.
He is of Afro-Caribbean- Jamaican descent and has two sons with his partner Leonie Daley. (Full article...)
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