Nine months after his previous World Cup race, Tim Don returns to the circuit this weekend a relieved world champion. There is nothing so precious as that which is taken away and until last week the Briton was banned for life from future Olympics. But there was more than just the Games riding on Don’s appeal for reinstatement.

Such is the way triathlon works that gone would have been his ability to earn a living as a member of the Great Britain World Cup squad. “I would have been taken off World Class Performance [lottery funding] and my World Cup days would have been numbered,” Don said. “World Cups are geared to Olympic selection so the [British Triathlon] Federation [BTF] would not have put me in.”

Don was reinstated on Thursday but, fearing the worst, he had drawn up contingency plans. Had his appeal failed, he would have quit standard-distance racing for his country, moved to the United States and taken up a career in Half Ironman and Ironman. “Triathlon is my livelihood and being banned was like a doctor losing his job for malpractice when he had done nothing wrong,” Don said.

Strictly speaking, Don had done wrong but, since the antidoping laws exist to catch the cheats and all the relevant authorities acknowledged that he had never sought to deceive, he was a victim of, not a triumph for, the system. The independent tribunal that imposed his initial three-month ban blamed a combination of forgetfulness on Don’s part and his lack of understanding of the new testing system.

The British Olympic Association (BOA), which imposed the life ban, ruled through its appeals panel that Don had never attempted, or intended, to break the rules. Furthermore, the panel and UK Sport, which governs antidoping in Britain, acknowledged “teething problems” with a new regulation under which British competitors who miss three drugs tests are suspended.

The tangled web woven by this regulation continues to spread after Don competed in the BUPA Great Manchester ten-kilometre road race last week. It was ridiculous enough that Christine Ohuruogu, the Commonwealth 400 metres champion, should be banned from athletics for a year while Don was suspended from triathlon for three months for the same offence because each sport sets its own tariff, but in Manchester, Don competed in Ohuruogu’s sport, with its one-year tariff, only eight months after being found guilty of an offence. Ohuruogu, who has yet to announce whether she will appeal against her ban, may feel encouraged by Don’s success.

Don’s ban expired in December and the BOA’s decision not to make him suffer further has come as a relief to senior BTF officials. “Had Tim not been reinstated . . . it would have been a terrible waste of his talent,” Norman Brook, the national governing body’s chief executive, said. Confirming that Don would effectively have become a second-class World Cup citizen, Brook said: “We have a maximum five athletes in World Cup races and the thing that gets us our three places at the Olympic Games . . . is the points they get by competing in World Cup races.

“I do not think it is strictly the case that we would not have entered Tim in World Cup races, but we might have had other athletes who had priority. He would not have been eligible [for funding] as part of the World Class Programme because that is about getting athletes to win medals in the Olympic Games.”

Don, 29, has competed in both men’s Olympic triathlons, the sport having being admitted to the Games in 2000. Now he is building towards Beijing next year and his most important race this season will be the World Cup, on the Olympic course in the Chinese capital, on September 16. Two weeks before that he plans to defend his world title in Hamburg.

Although Britain’s selection policy designates these races as trials for the Olympics, with two more to follow next year, greater weight is given to success in Beijing. “If I am in good shape for the World Championships I can hopefully hold that for two weeks through to Beijing,” Don said.

“Norman didn’t tell me the decision straight away,” Don, who had begun to think that his appeal had failed, said. “He went through what the BOA had said, that they did not take it lightly, that my last missed test was carelessness and that they did not want it to be seen that anybody missing three tests was dealt with leniently.”

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