Dwain Chambers will emerge from limbo to the halfway house of the Great Britain team next week after being picked for the European Team Championships in Leiria, Portugal.

The selection is a marked change from a year ago, when he was snubbed for slower runners, but highlights the enduring conundrum he poses.

The European indoor champion wanted to be in Berlin this weekend for the start of the Golden League, but despite supportive words from the meeting promoter, he was not given an invitation. Gerhard Janetzky said it was wrong that Chambers was able to run at the World Championships in Berlin in August, but not at the DKB-ISTAF meeting, which takes place in the same stadium tomorrow. However, he still fell in line with Euro- meetings’s unwritten agreement on ignoring convicted dopers.

So Chambers, who ran a modest 10.17sec in Montreuil in France on Thursday, can represent Britain but is still ostracised by the top promoters. However, the selection for Britain shows the common-sense approach of Charles van Commenee, the head coach of UK Athletics. “We have selected every athlete purely on a performance basis and not on promise or potential,” he said. “It is all about who are the best people for the job.”

The inclusion draws Chambers back into the fold after a tempestuous European Indoor Championships, where the publication of his autobiography meant he won gold but also provoked talk of internal inquiries and had Lord Coe suggesting he would “hold his nose” when the sprinter ran again.

Michael Johnson, the former Olympic 200 and 400 metres champion, has dismissed Project Bolt, the term Chambers has given to his season, as a publicity stunt. “I’m going to refuse to talk about it because I know what Dwain’s doing — Dwain’s just trying to get publicity,” he said.

The European Team Championships are the new version of the European Cup, which was won by the British men last year. Christine Ohuruogu, Britain’s only Olympic champion, has been picked for the 200 metres, Kate Dennison competes in the pole vault on the back of her British record set on Monday and Andy Turner runs in the 110 metre hurdles.

Ohuruogu is repeating the plan that brought her the Olympic gold last year by concentrating on the shorter sprints. She ran her first 400 metres of the summer at the same meeting as Chambers on Thursday, but the time of 51.14sec was typically modest for a woman who prides herself on peaking when it matters.