The fallout from the falling-out between Dwain Chambers and the UK Athletics selectors who picked him for Great Britain will reach its head this week when the collateral damage is assessed.

Simeon Williamson or Craig Pickering will miss out on a place at the World Indoor Championships, in Valencia next month, and, either way, the selectors can expect to open fresh wounds and receive a fresh salvo of vitriol.

But the rivalry between Williamson and Pickering is the genuine article. Williamson pressed his claims at the Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham on Saturday when he ran a personal best of 6.57sec to come second to Jaysuma Ndure, of Norway. “I’m trying everything I can to get on that plane,” the 22-year-old from North London said. “I’d be very disappointed if I didn’t make it.” If it were a race against time, it would be a dead heat.

Pickering has run 6.56 this season but was hugely disappointing at the trials, in which he came fifth and appeared to have been overwhelmed by the Chambers circus. However, it emerged last week that he had been suffering from a virus and he pulled out of Saturday’s race at the National Indoor Arena.

Pickering, who has the head-to-head advantage over Williamson this season, now plans to run in Paris on Friday night, when he needs a good time to impress the selectors before they name the team tomorrow week. “If he can’t go, we’ll write off the indoor season,” Malcolm Arnold, his coach, said.

It is an intriguing scenario. Pickering has greater experience and is the European silver medal-winner. He has also been one of the few athletes bold enough to cast any doubts over Chambers’s comeback, backed by his belief that drug cheats should receive life bans.

Meanwhile, Williamson, though also advocating life bans, has welcomed back Chambers and even taken a few tips from him when their paths have crossed at Lee Valley Athletics Centre. “I don’t think it is true that Dwain has damaged the reputation of British athletics because there are other drugs cheats out there, like the shot-putter Carl Myerscough,” he said, even suggesting that the British team should be grateful to have him back. Williamson might be expected to be less accommodating, given that he has felt wronged by the selectors in the past. Last year he was the second fastest 100 metres sprinter in the country but failed to make it to the World Championships. Having been ill at the trials, he won gold at the World Student Games in Bangkok and was hopeful that the selectors would fly him from Thailand to the British training camp in Macau. Instead, he came home and Mark Lewis-Francis, the sixth fastest Briton in 2007, went.