Lord Coe urged to back Alain Baxter medal campaign
The campaign to reinstate Alain Baxter’s Olympic bronze medal - which is being wholly endorsed by the former GB ski star - has gone all the way to the House of Lords.
Olympic legend Sebastian Coe is being called on to "redress the grave miscarriage of justice" which befell Alain in the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.
He claimed Britain’s first ever Olympic medal on snow, but was later disqualified after failing a drugs test.
Twenty millionths of a gram of the banned but non-performance-enhancing form of meth-amphetamine showed up in his urine sample.
It had come from a US version of a Vicks inhaler which Alain used for a long-running nasal condition but which is not contained in the British product.
Nearly 5,000 people have now signed the i-petition calling for the skier to have his medal returned.
Lord Coe, who unveiled Aviemore’s Olympic statue in 2007, is being urged to help spearhead the campaign.
Aviemore Community Council members have now penned a letter to Lord Coe, asking him to get on board to right what they describe as a wrong.
It states: "As you will be aware Alain was placed third in the men’s Alpine skiing slalom event and awarded the bronze medal.
"However, a drug test carried out at the time revealed a minute amount of an allegedly banned substance and Alain Baxter was disqualified and stripped of his medal.
"The decision was later appealed but this was unsuccessful on the basis that Alain Baxter had unknowingly ingested a prohibited substance and that constituted doping under the Olympic Movement Anti-Doping Code (OMAC).
"It should be noted that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was not without sympathy for Mr Baxter, who appeared to them to be a sincere and honest man who did not intend to obtain a competitive advantage in the race.
"The amount of substance in his body was such that there would have been no competitive advantage in any case.
"The main argument in the appeal, brought to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, was the assertion from Alain Baxter that the substance found, ‘levmetamfetamine’, was not a prohibited substance under OMAC.
"The International Olympic Committee argued that it was a prohibited substance, yet, at the time that they were arguing this they were changing the schedule in OMAC to specifically include it.
"It appears to us, and we would contend any reasonable person, that this is an admission by the OIC that they had got it wrong in the first place and were having to redress that.
"It was plain that the terminology used in OMAC in the first instance was ambiguous and not precise enough.
"That was not Alain Baxter’s fault. It was the fault of the OIC.
"Alain Baxter, we contend, was working within the rules at the time in question. Was the CAS aware that the OIC were changing the schedule?
"Much was made of the use of ‘strict liability’ in OMAC. Liability of any kind has to be balanced against fairness to the individual.
"The International Olympic Committee prides itself on being fair. Is it fair to argue a position while moving the goalposts in the background? We think not.
"Aviemore and Vicinity Community Council feel that Alain Baxter has been the subject of a grave miscarriage of justice that needs to be put right.
"We are not alone in our concerns.
"You will recall visiting Aviemore and opening a bronze statue commemorating the Olympians from the Badenoch and Strathspey Valley. Alain’s name is on the plaque.
"Aviemore and Vicinity Community Councils craves your assistance in our endeavours to have Alain Baxter’s bronze medal repatriated to its rightful owner."