This is a story of wrecks and dogs and rock’n’roll. But first the drugs. It is all about drugs. In the pubs and the papers and on Question Time. Chris Tomlinson is fed up with it. “I was speaking about it with a few athletes the other day,” he said. “The only time we’re big news is when someone is on drugs. There are thousands of clean athletes, but it’s always the dirty ones . . .”

Tomlinson has been in and out of love with the sport enough to know the pain and sacrifice needed to reach the summit. Like Greg Rutherford, a fellow Briton, he has suffered injuries that resulted in him being written off, but young, gifted and back, he is seeking to put the record straight.

So how to take Dwain Chambers off the back pages at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia next week? Jump 8.40 metres and win gold? “Yeah, that might do it,” Tomlinson said. “It’s about time I started winning medals.”

He means it. Tomlinson is only 26 but has been tipped as a star since breaking Lynn Davies’s 34-year British long jump record in 2002. He was fifth in the Olympic final in Athens in 2004 and the world was his oyster, but then came the injuries, including a serious hernia; he lost most of his contracts and appearance money and contemplated quitting.

Now the desire is evident and he has joined Lloyd Cowan’s sprint group at Lee Valley Athletics Centre in Enfield, North London, where he trains alongside Simeon Williamson, the prodigious sprinter going to Spain to partner Chambers in the 60 metres.

“There are athletes who look good in training and there are those who rise to the big occasion,” Tomlinson said. “Simeon is the latter. I think he’ll do very well in Valencia and will relish the pressure.” As for Chambers, Tomlinson’s pragmatic view is that, having served his ban, he should be able to run, but the penalties remain too lenient. “Dwain probably thinks that, too,” Tomlinson said.

The speed work is paying off. Tomlinson wants to reach 6.7sec for the 60 metres and said that he does “OK” against Williamson. “People underestimate long jumpers,” he said. “I remember being at a meeting with Mark Lewis-Francis [the British sprinter] in 2004 and he was up against Dwight Phillips [the Olympic long jump champion]. He said, ‘Who’s this bloke?’ I told him and he was pretty dismissive. Then Dwight went and beat him by about three metres.

“I decided this is my year. If you come fifth at the Olympics as a 22-year-old then you should be thinking about winning the next one. There is a lot more to come from me.”

Tomlinson extended his British record to 8.29 metres in Germany last summer but needs to be jumping farther than 8.40 to be in medal territory. His jump of 8.18 in Stuttgart this month was a British indoor record and he looks to be a star in the making. He is getting married to Lucia Rovardi, who plays the lead female role in The Buddy Holly Story in London’s West End. The wedding is to be held in May in Arpino, Italy, and Tomlinson, a Buddy aficionado, denied it could be a distraction in Olympic year. “I only have to turn up and say ‘I do’,” he said. Their relationship is unaffected by the plaque Tomlinson had made for the couple’s shiitsu, who died in a road accident. “I picked it up and the name was spelt wrong,” he said. “I left it there [at the shop].”

While Tomlinson focuses on Valencia, Rutherford has opted to miss the indoor season in an attempt to “make myself bulletproof”. The past two years have been a sorry tale of torn hamstrings, turned ankles, scar tissue and cysts. His capacity for misfortune was summed up when he got sunburnt at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006. “It was quite sore jumping into sand,” he said.

Tipped by Davies to turn his European silver into Olympic gold in London in 2012, Rutherford, 21, will open his season in May in Brazil, where he will compete in an Olympic qualifier. “I have to focus on the positives because if I thought about the negatives I’d go nowhere,” he said.

He has a personal best of 8.26 but missed most of 2007. “I jumped 7.96 in my first meeting of the year in Estonia but tore my hamstring and had to bale out in the air,” he said. “Then I had one jump at the World Championships [in Osaka] and one wonderful foul. Two jumps a year – not good.”

He remains nonplussed by the form of Irving Saladino and Andrew Howe, the world and European champions. “We’re not looking at Mike Powell [the American who set the world record of 8.95 in Japan in 1991] distances,” Rutherford said. “I can pretty much jump 8.20 whenever I want. There’s nothing to be scared about.”

The presence of Tomlinson is making Rutherford raise his game and it is a good, clean fight that could help to restore the reputation of athletics in Britain. They are treading different paths, but the endgame is the same.

Going the distance

Chris Tomlinson

Age 26

Home town Middlesbrough

Height 6ft 6in

Personal best 8.29m (British record)

Coach Peter Stanley

Honours Fifth at Olympic Games in 2004, set four British records, twice European Cup winner

Greg Rutherford Age 21

Home town Milton Keynes

Height 6ft 2in

Personal best 8.26m

Coach Frank Attoh

Honours European silver medal-winner in 2006, European junior champion in 2005

Head-to-head Tomlinson 2 Rutherford 3

Road to Beijing March 7-9 World Indoor Championships, Valencia.

July 11-13 Norwich Union Trials, Birmingham.

July 25-26 Norwich Union Grand Prix, Crystal Palace

For more information go to www.ukathletics.net