London's Olympic drugbusters 'misled me for years over the test that got me banned for life'

By Nick Harris for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 16:35 EST, 11 May 2013 | Updated: 16:35 EST, 11 May 2013

A former British Olympic shot putter, who has spent almost 16 years trying to get a lifetime ban for using drugs overturned, has started legal action against three top British sports bodies - including the laboratory that ran the anti-doping centre at London 2012.

Paul Edwards, 54, has lodged papers at the High Court initiating proceedings against UK Athletics, UK Sport and King's College London.

He is claiming that the out-of-competition test he failed in 1997 for raised levels of the male sex hormone, testosterone, should be set aside because of procedural shortcomings by the laboratory.

Give me justice: Paul Edwards with some of the paperwork he has amassed over his case

The claim against the Drug Control Centre at King's College has the potential to be hugely embarrassing because the unit, which normally handles 8,000 drug tests a year and is headed by the eminent scientist Professor David Cowan, ran the anti-doping laboratory for the London Olympics, carrying out around 6,000 tests during the Games.

If cleared to compete, Edwards could still appear on his sport's Masters circuit, where he might expect to earn a few thousand pounds a year.

But he is suing for loss of earnings for the decade immediately after his life ban, which could involve a sum as high as £750,000.

Edwards admits that some in athletics will point to his earlier failed drug test in 1994, for which he received a four-year ban, to cast doubt on his claims over the 1997 test.

The shot putter, who competed at the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics in 1988 and 1992, tested positive at the 1994 European Championships in Helsinki for a cocktail of banned substances, including anabolic steroids, raised testosterone and the stimulant pseudoephedrine.

In his heyday: Paul Edwards

That test was carried out by the then governing body of European athletics and the King's College centre were involved in performing subsequent 'validation' tests.

Edwards told The Mail on Sunday: 'I understand people will think I'm another cheat who says he's not. But all I've been asking for all these years is for an opportunity to present fresh evidence that my 1997 test should have been dismissed.

'I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs. I was in the middle of a court case in June 1997 to try to get my 1994 ban commuted when I was told that I'd be tested the next day. I'd have needed to be pretty stupid to give a sample which I thought could be positive while in the middle of a court case about getting an earlier ban lifted.'

Without that test, however, Edwards would have been free to return to competition in August of that year after his four-year ban was reduced to two.

He said: 'All I've ever wanted to do was get back to athletics. But I've exhausted all avenues. The life ban has cost me half my competitive lifetime. The action in the courts is my last resort.'

At the heart of Edwards's case, which has twice been raised in Parliament, is his contention that contemporaneous calibration data - in layman's terms, proof that the testing equipment is working accurately at the time a test is analysed - was not collected either when his 'A' sample, which was taken on June 21, 1997, was tested a few days later or when his 'B' sample was analysed, in the presence of his advisers, on September 18 of that year.

King's College say that contemporaneous calibration was not required in 1997, but the Drug Control Centre did collect calibration data on July 17 and September 16 as part of a regular procedure. Anti-doping and analytical experts have since claimed that without contemporaneous data, the results of Edwards's tests were meaningless.

Dr Simon Davis, of Imperial College, London, said: 'It's like getting on your bathroom scales to weigh yourself without checking the scales are at zero.'

Edwards claims that for more than a decade the King's College Drug Control Centre and Prof Cowan made statements giving the impression that they had collected contemporaneous calibration data but were withholding it for a number of different reasons.

Prof Cowan's letters to UK Sport in 2003 and 2004 suggested to Edwards that the centre did have the data but that it would be costly to provide the information.

When Dr Davis, who had gained limited access to the King's College centre on Edwards's behalf in 2003, suggested that contemporaneous data had not, in fact, been collected, Cowan replied that this specific claim was 'not true'.

Two years later, Edwards made a Freedom of Information request, asking King's College for the contemporaneous data. King's claimed they could not provide it, citing a health and safety provision within the Freedom of Information Act, but were criticised by the Information Commissioner's Office for 'extremely poor practice' in their handling of his request.

Legal action: Paul Edwards wants compensation

UK Sport also said that the data Edwards wanted did exist but could not be provided. In one letter from UK Sport's policy director, Peter Smith, in August 2008, Smith cited not only the difficulty of copying the data as one reason Edwards could not have it - but that having it might assist a corrupt athlete to develop untraceable drugs.

Eventually, in May 2009, as part of another Freedom of Information request by Edwards, Prof Cowan admitted that contemporaneous calibration data had not been collected in 1997 after all.

'As far as I'm concerned, they had been giving me misleading information for six years at least, and that completely undermined my search for the truth,' said Edwards.

King's College said last week: 'While the specific wording … in two separate communications, from 2004 and five years later in 2009, could be construed as ambiguous without all the background contextual information, that was not the intention.'

King's say that in 1997 there were no rules obliging them to collect contemporaneous calibration data.

'Any inconsistency arises from the handling of Mr Edwards's original FOI request [in 2006] and not from the work of the Drug Control Centre, which followed the protocols in place at the time,' they added.

'The College accepts that procedural mistakes were made in its handling of Mr Edwards's Freedom of Information request of March 13, 2006. The College's position [is] that calibration was carried out in accordance with good practice at the time and that contemporaneous calibration was not a requirement at the time.'

However, Joe Eastwood, a pharmaceutical consultant with 38 years' experience in the assessment of medical and healthcare data, says this is a 'disingenuous claim'.

He insists that running contemporaneous calibration data was already an established protocol in laboratories in 1997 and that an academic paper written by Prof Cowan himself in 1996 illustrated the importance of the procedure.

Eastwood says that even without written obligations to collect contemporaneous calibration data in 1997, a test done without such data 'would be invalid by definition'.

King's and Prof Cowan have been censured over a previous test. Mark Hylton, a British 400 metre runner who won a relay silver medal at the Atlanta Olympics of 1996, had a two-year ban for a nandrolone finding in 1999 overturned after errors were highlighted by a UK Athletics disciplinary committee in July 2000.

The committee also recorded its 'disquiet' that Hylton had faced difficulties in accessing the data used against him.

'This is unacceptable and should not occur again,' wrote the committee in a confidential report, seen by The Mail on Sunday, although King's College maintained last week that there had been no 'substantive errors by the Drug Control Centre' in the Hylton case.

Yet, from 2003-2009, King's College, Prof Cowan, UK Sport and UK Athletics were all part of a system that caused Edwards to believe he was being refused access to contemporaneous calibration data, before it finally became apparent that no such data existed.

Edwards obtained that admission after accusing King's College, through yet another Freedom of Information appeal, of suppressing the contemporaneous data.

But the tribunal that heard his case ruled on November 8, 2010, that, while King's College had shown 'poor practice' in handling Edwards's request, there was 'no evidence of dishonesty' and no evidence that King's College held the data Edwards had requested.

The tribunal also said that while Edwards 'may feel aggrieved at how King's College handled his request for the calibration data and this may have fuelled his suspicions; they are no more than that'.

How ever, the tribunal did suggest that Edwards ask King's College for the calibration data collected as a routine procedure on July 17 and September 16, 1997.

When Edwards requested that information, King's replied that the data had, in fact, been destroyed and last week they confirmed that this had happened between May 14 and 18, 2010.

They added that normal World Anti-Doping Agency practice was for such samples to be retained for eight years following a failed drug test.

Edwards claimed last week: 'It seems that at every turn I have been told that I cannot have information I'm entitled to.'

He remains frustrated by his failure to have the evidence in his case reassessed.

He said: 'I'm not after special treatment. I just want the science to be considered.'

UK Athletics, the body which charged Edwards over his failed 1997 drug test, told The Mail on Sunday: 'We will decline to comment on [the] basis of the legal process taking place.'

UK Sport, who until 2009 were responsible for the UK's anti-doping policy and enforcement, added: 'Given the judicial nature of the process, UK Sport will not comment further at this stage.'

Testing times: Hugh Robertson (left) and Professor David Cowan of King's College London (right)

How testers came unstuck in the case of Mark Hylton

The Drug Control Centre at King's College London is the only laboratory in the UK accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Headed by the eminent scientist, Professor David Cowan, the centre operated the facility that ran the anti-doping programme for last summer's Olympics and Paralympics, testing more than 6,000 samples across both Games.

Ban overturned: Mark Hylton

Nine Olympic athletes tested positive, most prominently Nadzeya Ostapcguk, of Belarus, who won the gold medal in the women's shot putt but had her title stripped after testing positive for anabolic steroids.

The centre's antidoping systems during London 2012 won praise during the Games from anti-doping experts for being '100 per cent state of the art'.

But the centre's historic record is not completely flawless.

The British runner Mark Hylton, who won a 4x400m silver medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, tested positive for nandrolone in 1999, but had a two-year ban overturned in 2000 after a UK Athletics disciplinary committee found there had been errors in the centre's testing.

Prof Cowan told the committee that backup checks had not been done because of an 'oversight' and the committee concluded: 'This evidence, of itself, was in our view sufficient to drive us to the conclusion that [the centre's] analysis of Mr Hylton's B sample was unsatisfactory.'

The committee also voiced 'disquiet' at the 'unacceptable' difficulty Hylton had in accessing evidence against him.

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