Home truths that will define Rusedski's career

Whether or not Greg Rusedski regards Montreal as his home town is not clear, since for the past eight years he has played his tennis wrapped in a Union flag and based himself in London. But Montreal is where Greg was born and where his career may expire as the result of a drugs hearing there tomorrow.

A test on Rusedski at the Indianapolis tournament last July revealed elevated levels of the steroid nandrolone, and the 30-year-old left-hander, who shares the world speed-serving record at 149 mph, served up another bomb last month in Australia by going public about the positive reading.

It was a calculated risk, taken after the media got wind of the rumour, but in the opinion of Dick Pound, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), Rus-edski's comments have upped the odds against him. "What he said certainly takes out the issue of whether or not he was positive, so his burden now is to show how this stuff got into his system," said Pound, whose organisation also have their headquarters in Montreal.

Rusedski, who flies to Canada today with his wife, Lucy, and lawyer, Mark Gay, will base his defence on the claim that the drugs found in his system had the same "analytical footprint" as those revealed by tests on seven other members of the Association of Tennis Professionals, who were cleared last July when the ATP admitted players could have taken the substance in drinks and supple- ments provided by the ATP's own trainers. Indeed, Rusedski asserts he is one of 47 tennis players out of 120 tested to reveal elevated levels of the performance-enhancing drug.

However, ATP physios were ordered last May to stop supplying anything which could boost nandrolone levels, and Rusedski's sample was taken two months later. According to Pound, whose uncompromising attitude in these matters is well documented, Rusedski seems to be trying to get lost among those tested earlier and subsequently cleared. "I am just looking at this from 10,000 feet," Pound added, "and I see somebody, well after this original disclosure, trying to say that the same rules apply to him when the circumstances may not have been the same."

Having suffered recent hammer-blows to their credibility, the ATP are keen to have the drugs row resolved to the satisfaction of as many as possible. With that in mind, Wada were asked to investigate the positive tests on the Czech, Bohdan Ulihrach, whose conviction for nandrolone was overturned, and the six other players whose identities have not been revealed. "As far as we are concerned those six will never be named, and never should be, because they won a tribunal, they are innocent," said an ATP spokesman, David Higdon. "Any case where players are exonerated is confidential and remains so."

Confidentiality is evident in Rusedski's case, too. The location is secret and the tribunal is closed to all but ATP officials and legal representatives of the two sides. Wada's director-general, David Howman, had intended to turn up and talk to ATP personnel in pursuit of that organisation's request for help from the anti-doping agency, but Rusedski's advisers have objected to his presence.

"I am not sure what has been going on in tennis and that is part of what we would have hoped to find out by attending Monday's hearing," said Pound. "The ATP certainly called us in after the fact, in response to a very lukewarm reception of the judgement about the seven players. They leapt pretty quickly to the conclusion that their own trainers were responsible, accepting a theory that was strange. As far as I know, there is not a tittle of evidence for something the ATP accepted, saying, 'My God, that's true'. As for the Rusedski claim about 47 players, that's a lot of people and I think it should be disturbing to the ATP. Our decision in this won't be too long," he promised.

On the other hand, although the hearing will be completed tomorrow, the verdict of the three-man tribunal will not be known for at least 10 days, when the chairman, Canadian lawyer Yves Fortier, will have the document, expected to run to 40 pages, posted on the ATP website.

The identity of his fellow members, a doctor and a doping expert, will not be revealed beforehand, and the hearing is being held in Montreal because that is where the 68-year-old Fortier is based. A former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Fortier was Canada's ambassador to the United Nations from 1988-92 and at one stage president of the Security Council.

He has chaired other ATP drugs tribunals and also serves on the Court of Arbitration for Sport. "If an appeal is considered necessary, it goes to CAS," said Higdon. "But neither a player nor the ATP has ever done this."

Perhaps, if he fails to come up with a home-town decision, Rusedski will become a first in this depressing field.