But a three-man tribunal cleared Rusedski and criticised the ATP, the governing body of the men’s professional tour, for bringing the case.Yesterday, expressing “enormous relief,” the big-serving left-hander felt like a born-again competitor. When he confirmed in January, under intense media pressure, that he had tested positive for nandrolone in Indianopolis last July, Rusedski vowed to clear his name from involvement in what he called “one of the biggest scandals in world sport”.Protesting that he had been singled out unfairly, Rusedski said 46 of his fellow professionals ranked in the world top 120 had also given elevated readings of nandrolone, and with the same “analytical fingerprint” as his own test sample.Six players whose cases had been dealt with under the ATP Tour’s confidentiality clause were let off and not named. But if yesterday’s announcement represents one passing reprieve, the most important questions present themselves as relentlessly as ever. Is sport really in control of its own destiny and is it properly geared for fighting its worst enemy? For the moment we are as far away as ever from positive answers..

Purgatory is not knowingly featured in holiday brochures, but that is where Greg Rusedski has been, hoping that a mirage of sun and sea would take his mind off judgement day. The other is that its testing regime is as belligerently intrusive as an individual flake. Somewhere in between, you have to suspect, is a reality that simply isn’t being engaged.With each new episode of a Chambers, a Ferdinand or a Rusedski the sense of public confusion, and scepticism, can only grow. Each new case provokes a whole new debate, not just on the central problem of controlling drugs in sport, but the very details of the execution of that challenge.In the process there is only one group of outright beneficiaries It is the lawyers. They wax fat as basic certainties about who is cheating, and who is not, get ever thinner.Rusedski’s clearing of his name will be welcomed by all those who see each new drug conviction as another small death in the life of sport, another question about whether it has been bombarded to the point of extinction by the demand for success and its spiralling rewards. When sprinter Dwain Chambers was banned for two years, chief executive David Moorcroft made great play of the massive expense to UK Athletics – perhaps as much as £300,000.

But there is a price to pay for building new and decent foundations into modern sport, and sports which cannot meet the price have to ask themselves whether they deserve to exist – at least as contenders for public confidence.Rusedski’s routing of his ATP prosecutors – and the fact that eight previous defendents were acquitted – tells us one of two things One is that tennis is as pure as fresh snow. They were just about indistinguishable in the supervisory chaos they exposed.Both affairs have highlighted perhaps the single most pressing imperative in all of big-money sport. It is the need for a universally acknowledged testing system with a clearly stated operating procedure.A world anti-doping agency headed by the vastly experienced Dick Pound of Canada is now in place and it is surely the duty of sports like tennis and football to dovetail their efforts to root out the cheats. Drug testing is, we know, expensive and never guaranteed success, but what has happened recently has revealed nothing so much as the wholesale disarray of the various sporting authorities.The Ferdinand and Rusedski cases were allowed to drag along into ridicule; each passing day testing the patience of followers of football and tennis to breaking point.The Football Assocation’s reaction to Ferdinand’s clear transgression of a basic rule was plainly conditioned by the absence of both a meaningful precedent and any straightforward procedure. The result was a delay in administration of justice that was so grotesque it could only have been exceeded in haplessness by the Association of Tennis Players, which finally concluded that they had been to blame all along.This just isn’t good enough from sports which market themselves into a frenzy and draw massive financial rewards from televison and sponsorship.

In its outcome, and in other ways, the Greg Rusedski case is quite different to that of Rio Ferdinand, and not least in that while the tennis player waged a ferociously effective defence the footballer was guilty from the moment he missed a drugs test. “The tribunal ruling underscores the problem of nandrolone contamination that we identified last year and still face today,” Mark Miles, the ATP’s chief executive, said.Last week the ATP announced the formation of a “Task Force” of current and former players, administrators and pharmaceutical scientists to address the problem. Tim Henman, the British No 1, and Andre Agassi, the former world No 1, are members of the panel, whose first meeting is scheduled for 23 March in Miami.”On the one hand,” said Miles, “it is clear that dietary and nutritional supplements pose real risks of testing positive under anti-doping rules. On the other hand, ?te athletes have special dietary and nutritional needs, and often are advised to take vitamins, minerals and supplements to prevent heat exhaustion, cramping and other ailments.”Yesterday the ATP announced “an expansion” of its efforts to identify the cause of the low levels of nandrolone or its precursors in anti-doping test samples. Two new experts – Dr Peter Hemmersbach, who heads the doping analysis section at the Hormone Lab of the Aker University Hospital in Norway, and the Hon Robert J Ellicott, the former Australian Solicitor General and Attorney General – have agreed to join the ATP investigation, and the ATP will also ask Wada to name a third member of the group.To date, the investigation has included interviews with more than 100 individuals, including players, officials and experts, along with thorough examination and analysis of all available data.The ATP said that although there have been no new positive nandrolone samples since Rusedski’s case, 16 low-level trace readings of nandrolone or its precursors, which are not doping violations, have been identified in tests during tournaments this year.. The World Anti-Doping Authority are in the final stages of an investigation into the cases of seven players who were let off before Rusedski tested positive.Their samples showed the same “analytical fingerprint” as Rusedski’s, but the sport’s anti-doping programme tribunals dismissed the cases in the summer of 2003 after they determined that the ATP was estopped from enforcing its anti-doping rules due to the ATPs practice, halted in May 2003, of distributing nutritional supplements to players.Yesterday, an eighth tribunal rendered a similar judgement, dismissing the charges against Rusedski using the legal principle of estoppel. The governing body of the men’s tour, the Association of Tennis Professionals, has now taken Greg Rusedski’s place in the dock.
Rusedski’s successful defence after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone last July has fuelled criticism of the ATP’s anti-doping procedures.