London 2012 Olympics: Do we really want drug cheats to wear the Team GB vest in London?

Hot topic: should reformed drug cheat David Millar (l) be allowed to help world champion Mark Cavendish (r) win Olympic gold in London?

The big question for British sports fans is: do you want people who have cheated, lied, sneakily pumped themselves full of drugs, not just once as a mistaken error, but in a systemised, deliberate series of actions, to represent the country?

Or is it okay that because these athletes are good at what they do (and who knows how much of this has been influenced by their previous drug-taking) that they are worthy of wearing the TeamGB vest?

Clearly the door has been opened for athletes like Dwain Chambers and David Millar to legally challenge the lifetime ban imposed by the British Olympic Association in the wake of LaShawn Merritt's successful appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

And in the end they might legally, and technically, earn the right to compete at the London 2012 Olympics. But is this morally and ethically the right thing to do?

There are lots of justifications that readers have suggested – like allowing athletes the chance for redemption, not to keep punishing them once they have served their time and perhaps, most potently, the fear that other countries will have their disgraced, duplicitous athletes competing at the London Olympics, so why not the UK?

But this last argument simply reduces the UK to the lower standards of other countries.

And why shouldn't authorities here decide the calibre of people and the appropriate standards of conduct that are worthy for such a privileged berth? Certainly the large majority of athletes believe this to be the case, and more than 95 per cent of Olympians support the BOA stance.

Yet a Telegraph poll, which elicited one of the website's most popular responses, showed that 53 per cent of readers thought Dwain Chambers should be allowed to compete at the London Olympics.

The World Anti Doping Agency had previously made an interesting pitch to CAS, saying that the reduction of sanctions for athletes who provide information about their suppliers has not been as successful as anticipated.

They had been enticing athletes to provide information about doping, the deal being that their sentences would be reduced to six months for the information.  But these sentences still fell under the International Olympic Committee's ban for the next Games (the very ban that has collapsed after the Merritt test case).

The argument, made before the Merritt ruling, was interesting because, with WADA's detection not progressing at the pace they would like, it could have been interpreted as a request for more lenient sentences for whistlebowers, which would then have allowed them to appear in London.

The Merritt ruling now keeps the incentive in place for athletes like Millar to come clean about their drug taking with the offer of possible Olympic places for those who tell the truth.

On Tuesday, UK Anti Doping is launching its "Clean Sport" mantra at Trafalgar Square, which now has a hollow note. The only certainty that will come out of this is that the nine-month lead-up to the London Olympics will be enveloped by possible legal challenges from Chambers and Millar.