Doug Gillon on Wednesday: The lunatics have taken over the sporting asylum, and sports law is an ass. UK Athletics was obliged yesterday to select Dwain Chambers, a convicted doping cheat, to represent Britain.

The lunatics have taken over the sporting asylum, and sports law is an ass. UK Athletics was obliged yesterday to select Dwain Chambers, a convicted doping cheat, to represent Britain at the World Indoor Championships next month.

This offends all those who treasure the ethos of sport, but had they not picked him, athletics risked bankruptcy for the second time. The law now supports guilty cheats and fails to protect innocent athletes.

That this should happen as a new biography on sport's ultimate role model, Scottish icon Eric Liddell, hit the bookstands is supreme irony.

Yet there is a body of public perception of Chambers which is at odds with that of UK Athletics. Crowds of young autograph hunters, dewey-eyed in admiration, queued at Sheffield in the hope of having him sign t-shirts and autograph books after he had won the 60 metres trial. Parents waited with them. It was all edgily inappropriate.

Earlier, music by Amy Winehouse had blared around the arena. Rehab from drugs seemed the theme of the day. The sport cannot control the music, far less have competitors face it or the appropriate consequence of their actions.

But UKA has choked on the notion of handing appearance money to Chambers, some of which would have gone to the International Association of Athletics Federations to pay off money due from the spoils of his drug fuelled days. They have excluded him from a grand prix in Birmingham under their jurisdiction this weekend.

It is a small victory. Their main concern is that Chambers only recently returned to the random anti-doping programme. They feel he should have been on this for a year before being allowed back. That this nightmare has been visited on them has been exposed as a bureaucratic blunder by the sport itself. "God forbid that we should be assisting Chambers," an insider from the world athletics body told The Herald, "but he's served his sentence and has operated within athletics' anti-doping rules since he went to gridiron. So he's eligible to compete."

It's a pity UKA had not clarified this with the IAAF before announcing their laudable but impotent zero-tolerance policy. Dave Collins, UKA performance director, claimed yesterday he had been "dismissive of the sport" but Chambers warned, on departing for a possible career in American football, that he planned to return. With that comment on record, UKA should never have removed him from the UK Sport anti-doping register. But they did.

It appears that happened before the current regime was in place at their Solihull headquarters, so recrimination is pointless.

However, they currently remain guilty of double standards which do them no credit, no matter how laudable their aims.

Lawyers were present during selection and their advice was that an "exceptional circumstances" clause could not be invoked to exclude Chambers.

But what about Carl Myerscough, the 6ft 10ins shot putter, selected yesterday without competing in the trial, never mind winning it? UKA had every argument for leaving him out, and sending the message they could not deliver on Chambers.

The so-called Blackpool Tower has been a beacon of infamy. He tested positive for a cocktail of banned substances in 1999, and later married an American thrower who also failed a dope test. Like Chambers he is banned for ever competing in the Olympics, but the sprinter has hinted he may give the law a chance to prove itself even more of an ass by challenging the British Olympic Association in court. Moral right may be on their side, but the UKA precedent suggests it would not be prudent to bet on the BOA winning that one.

Collins said yesterday that the Lancastrian was acceptable because he was not keeping any other young thrower from the team. But if there's zero tolerance, and he has not fulfilled the criteria, why pick him?

Linford Christie, another convicted drug cheat, is coaching - a further affront: akin to having a fox guard the hen run. Chambers lionised as a champion, after rocketing up the rankings propelled by a designer steroid is equally disturbing.

Where does UKA's stance leave Christie? Collins said he was no longer mentoring young athletes, is suspended by the BOA, and ineligible to coach in Beijing or London 2012. "Changing athletics is a work in progress, in Britain, and indeed the world," he said.

However, UKA should be aware several other athletes competing in Birmingham have doping convictions to their name. Why have they not been excluded like Chambers?

And spare a thought for Simeon Williamson, the European under-23 100m champion. He beat Craig Pickering to win that title, and when Pickering imploded in Sheffield on Sunday, stormed home to take second. But was he named yesterday?

He was not, which came as no surprise to his coach, Lloyd Cowan. Williamson must now face Pickering in Birmingham again this weekend. Collins denies it's a run-off for the single remaining place, but Cowan said: "You watch. It's the third time in three years that Simeon has had to race off."

Chambers's infamy is an enormity, but hypocrisy is in hot pursuit.