There were some great performances at the World Indoor Championships and none of the better than the enormous 17.75m leap of Phillips Idowu in the triple jump to claim gold with the 5th longest indoor jump of all time.

This was fantastic.

To be backed up by 4 silver medals in a global championship by Britain is equally a great performance from the team.  Kelly Sotherton, Dwain Chambers, Jeanette Kwakye and Chris Tomlinson all got silver medals in their events. 

For me Jeanette Kwakye, coached by Michael Afilaka, was the star of the track for Britain, with a new British 60m record, eclipsing Bev Kinch's 20 year old record.  Well done Jeanette.

Much of the talk has been about Dwain Chambers, and for all the wrong reasons - so I guess we should talk about it here.  First of all, on a positive note, it was a great competitive performance to break you PB, under all that pressure in the final of a World Championships.  Mentally, he has been very strong and seems to have been able to use all the adversity to his benefit to motivate him over the last month or two.  He should be congratulated for this.

Next, the drug issue.

He took drugs - and no-one can condone that.

However, he has served the penalty stipulated for doing so and, I believe, should be given a chance to make amends and be a positive contributor to the world of athletics, as despite his obvious flaws, talents like his don't come along very often.  In my view, (and that of former UK Members Council's vice president, Mike Winch), he should have been brought into the fold to tell youngsters about the mistakes that can be made in the sport - oh, and tested VERY VERY regularly!

If the sport wishes to have stronger rules against those who cheat, then great - 4 years sounds good to me - but everyone deserves a second chance.

In my opinion, he would have been welcomed back a second time, as he was before, if he hadn't done an interview with Inside Sport and stated that to be Olympic Champion you need to take drugs.  Instantly he created hundreds of enemies, many of whom work in the media that he is now trying to woo, by implying that they are all drugs cheats as well (not a smart move!). 

In the long-term if this serves as a wake up call to the sport and drugs are taken even more seriously than before, then this is great - but the safeguards need to be even stronger that individual errors are not made in testing and innocent athletes punished, especially if the penalties become more draconian.

Here is to the athletics and not the drugs making the headlines over the coming months!!!! (I may be a little optomistic to hope this!).