On Saturday the powerbrokers of global athletics will sit down in Berlin and debate whether Dwain Chambers has brought the crime of drug-taking into disrepute by writing a book. He is published and damned.

The miasma of bitterness pouring forth from his autobiography has prompted a raft of subplots. There was talk of an internal inquiry at UK Athletics and of the IAAF effectively ending his career. He was then reportedly offered a way back to the big time by the Berlin leg of the Golden League, only for the promoter to tell The Times that that was unlikely. Then Chambers admitted he was still in contact with Victor Conte, his former drug supplier. UKA said that it would demand answers. Chambers gave them by denying he was being coached by either Conte or the equally disgraced Remi Korchemny. He also pointed out that it was OK for another tainted figure from sport’s drugged past, Jürgen Grobler, to be Britain’s rowing guru.

It has, even by Chambers’s vertiginous standards for controversy, been quite a week. And now the IAAF Council will decide whether he has brought athletics into disrepute. It is a non-starter. Chambers lied, cheated and defrauded a sport, but he did two years for that. Explaining his drug regime in detail may provide bad publicity, but it is good news for anyone interested in cleaning up a tainted sport, and the truth is that Chambers brought athletics into disrepute when he started doping and denying. His literary efforts do not compare.

Chambers has not helped himself. The scattergun attack on Lord Coe was self-defeating and, while his drug testimony was telling, it clouded his coronation as European 60 metres indoor champion earlier this month. “I’m doing my sport clean, I’m not failing any drug tests,” he said, but he had just written an 80,000-word cheats charter explaining how easy it is to beat those tests.

Gerhart Janetzky, director of Berlin’s Golden League meeting, said Chambers was a “popular victim” but a poll in Der Tagesspiegel, the newspaper, found that the majority of respondents did not want to see him run in Germany. So Janetzky would not be breaking ranks, although he had some damning words for his fellow Golden League directors, who adhere to the unwritten rule not to allow convicted dopers to run. “If they do not invite him, then they avoid the doping issue and there is a perception their meeting is clean,” he said. The comment was laced with innuendo.

Chambers still hopes that one of the big meetings will offer a lifeline, but he refuses to help himself and his relationship with Conte is bizarre. Never once has he expressed a semblance of anger at his former drugs baron or blamed him. “It’s like in The Matrix when Morpheus meets Neo and offers him the red or blue pill,” he told me. “The blue pill would make life carry on as normal while the red would answer the questions of the matrix. Victor never once forced me down this road.” This week Chambers tried to explain his continuing relationship. “I have not cut off all ties, but we are not in regular contact,” he said. “The suggestion that we are still working closely together and that Remi remains part of my coaching team is wrong.”

However, Korchemny, given a year’s probation after admitting distributing stimulants, muddied the waters yesterday by saying that he was advising Chambers.

Chambers said that Conte was helping him with a breathing device to boost his red blood cell count and in “the fight against drugs, particularly to prevent young athletes making the same mistakes I made”. But the partnership inevitably reflects badly on a man many are loath to trust.

So Chambers remains in a state of limbo. Denied making a living by his drug past, he wrote a book about it, which may now hamper his prospects of making a living in the future. The calmest response came from Charles van Commenee, the eminently sensible UKA head coach. “It’s one of those things,” he said. “Somebody’s writing a book, nobody’s reading it. Have we ever read an interesting book from an athlete? Not me. So it’s not an issue.” The IAAF Council will surely agree. Race Against Me should be irrelevant because Chambers had a reputation for disrepute long before he picked up a pen.