BOA concede defeat in their bid to issue lifetime bans to drug cheats

The British Olympic Association have reluctantly conceded they will never be able to impose lifetime bans on drug cheats.

The BOA was forced to drop its lifetime ban ahead of last year's Olympics following months of legal wrangling and courtroom battles.

It had been hoped the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) would allow governing bodies the right to issue lifetime bans in its new code which comes into force later this year.

But BOA chairman Lord Coe has accepted that time and effort would be better spent on backing a campaign for a minimum four-year ban for first offences.

Coe said: "I think that train has left the station.

"I can see now that that is not going to happen. What I don't want is this organisation focusing all its time on tub-thumping something that seriously is not going to happen.

"I don't think you will ever get, as a first response, a lifetime ban.

"I think the landscape legally is too complicated. I am unreconstructed but we made an educated judgement at the IAAF that our focus was better focused on moving from two to four years and persuading WADA that that is the way that it needs to go, and I think that seems to be succeeding.

"With issues about human rights and all those sorts of things you could spend a lot of time trying to secure that [a lifetime ban] and I don't think you will get there.

"That's why I said the train has left the station."

The BOA was forced to drop the lifetime ban after losing a court ruling to WADA which allowed sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Millar to compete for Team GB in London despite having previously served two-year bans for doping.