If you can't do the time

... Don't do the crime, as the saying goes.

I can't imagine there are too many genuine sports fans who are losing sleep over the news that Dwain Chambers was today unsuccessful in his attempt to overturn his lifetime Olympic ban in the high court.

Under the rules of the British Olympic Association, which takes a harder stance than other countries' athletics associations (and indeed many other sports), Chambers' positive 2003 test for the designer steroid THG - an offence to which he has since confessed in an attempt at clemency - precludes him from selection for the Olympics, even though he won the national trials last weekend.

Chambers had argued that the ban was an unfair restraint of trade. And although Mr Justice Mackay suggested that the BOA's by-law could be seen as unlawful, he refused to grant an injunction to temporarily suspend the lifetime ban until a full hearing, which is now unlikely to occur, could be convened next year.

In reality, Chambers' right to earn a living is a long way from being curtailed. He remains eligible to qualify for both the European and World Championships, and his notoriety may favour him as a draw for promoters of race meetings across the world.

And, of course, he is free to sell his side of the story to the tabloids, or to appear on the next series of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, where he can feast on witchetty grubs to his heart's content.

That aside, I am delighted by today's verdict. It will certainly make other British drug cheats think twice before challenging the BOA again - the precedent set if Chambers had won is too horrible to contemplate - and the fact that the UK governing body adopts a more draconian position than other countries is neither here nor there. And while he might look wistfully at someone like David Millar, banned from cycling for the mandatory two years but now something of a poster boy for the new anti-drugs movement in the sport, again that is neither here nor there. As an athlete, Chambers knew exactly what the risk was before he was caught, and just because he has admitted his guilt does not automatically entitle him to an early parole at the expense of clean, if less talented, athletes like Craig Pickering who have leigitimately earned the right to go to Beijing.

Whichever way you put it, Dwain, you are a convicted cheat. It's time to live with the consequences.