As Christine Ohuruogu celebrated the lifting of her lifetime Olympic ban, it was revealed that three other athletes are sitting nervously on two missed tests. It means that the Great Britain team going to Beijing next year could be weakened significantly if they fall foul of the system that caught out the 400 metres world champion.

Ohuruogu spoke of her relief yesterday after the independent Sports Dispute Resolution Panel (SDRP) moved quickly to declare her free to challenge for a place in the Olympics. “I felt very relieved,” the 23-year-old, who was informed of the decision by her agent, said. “I felt able to exhale.”

Although Ohuruogu had already served a one-year ban for missing three out-of-competition tests, a BOA bylaw automatically barred her from competing for Britain at the sport’s biggest event. The successful appeal will result in her being restored to the lottery-funded World Class Podium Programme of UK Athletics (UKA) and make her eligible for a minimum of £25,000 a year in funding.

Ohuruogu accepts that there are some who will neither forgive nor believe her version of events that led to the ban, but the circumstances surrounding her second missed test highlighted what Ed Warner, the UKA chairman, called the “inflexibility” of the whereabouts system. Having forgotten to tell the tester that she had changed her schedule, Ohuruogu offered to drive across London to meet the official, but was told that she had only one hour to complete the 90-minute journey.

“We have to build in some flexibility for a dialogue between testers and athletes,” Warner said. “Our testing regime is one of the most stringent and systematically applied and the ‘three strikes and you’re out rule’ only really applies here, in Australia and in the United States.”

Having to state where you will be for an hour a day, five days a week, may not sound too daunting to the layman, but it has caught out three other British athletes, including Becky Lyne, the middle-distance runner — the other two remain unnamed. Lyne has admitted being “totally paranoid” about missing a third test. The World Anti-Doping Agency is expected to adopt a new code in January 2009 that will mean athletes are banned if they miss three tests in 18 months as opposed to the present limit of five years. “If they did that, we will move to having no athletes on two tests,” Warner said.

Ohuruogu tells testers these days that she will be at her home between 7 and 8am. Previously, she was living in a chaotic family home with eight siblings and found it more difficult to arrange a time for a tester to take a sample. “I’m not a drugs cheat,” Ohuruogu said. “I’ve been tested during the time of my ban and during competition and I will continue to be tested.”

One of those tests came three days after the missed appointment that led to her suspension. “I can’t control what other people think,” she added.

The Athletes’ Commission is considering ways in which the testing process can be made easier, but Ohuruogu said that ideas such as tracking athletes via their mobile phones, or even computer chips, sounded “a bit intrusive”. However, UKA has devised a programme of texting daily reminders to athletes on two tests.

Warner added that he was supportive of the BOA bylaw to give lifetime bans to athletes who return positive drugs tests, but the cases of Tim Don, the triathlete, and Peter Cousins, the judo fighter, whose bans were lifted this year, and now Ohuruogu shows that it may be unworkable in the matter of missed tests.

Simon Clegg, the BOA chief executive, welcomed Ohuruogu’s possible inclusion as part of the Britain team, but said: “The BOA and the panel stress that no advance notice of out-of-competition testing is a fundamental part of ensuring an effective fight against doping in sport. Athletes must be fully aware of their obligations to keep their whereabouts information up to date at all times and must ensure that they are available for testing at the designated times and places.”