The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, said at the London Games 100 years ago that “the important thing in life is not the victory but the contest; the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well”.

For sports lawyers anxious to win and not just to take part in litigation, some important principles were confirmed by the judgment of Mr Justice Mackay in the Dwain Chambers case. The judge upheld the right of the British Olympic Association to exclude the 100m runner from the Great Britain team at next month’s Beijing Games because of a lifelong ban on those found to have committed a doping offence.

The first principle of sports law is that governing bodies are not public authorities whose decisions are subject to judicial review. The Court of Appeal so stated in 1992 in a case brought by the Aga Khan against the Jockey Club.

The second principle recognised by Mr Justice Mackay in the Chambers case is that the decisions of such bodies may be challenged in private law proceedings, even if there is no contractual relationship between the sportsman and the decision-maker. But because such judicial control has been developed in the context of restraint of trade, in order to protect the right to work from unreasonable restrictions, the courts will not entertain a legal challenge concerning an amateur event even if there would be indirect commercial benefits for the competitor.

So in 1988, the Court of Appeal ruled that a professional tennis player and coach had no legal redress against the Essex Lawn Tennis Association for leaving him out of the county team, however unfair that selection decision might be. This was, the court emphasised, an amateur event in which the participants received “no reward but that of honour”, and it was immaterial that the plaintiff hoped and expected that success for the Essex team would improve his chances of securing sponsorship and promoting his coaching career. Similarly, Chambers was complaining about his exclusion from an event for which there is no prize money, and his hope that success might bring indirect financial rewards was legally irrelevant.

The third principle is that in those cases where the court has jurisdiction, it does not apply a private law test of reasonableness to assess the impugned decision. Even though this is not public law litigation, the court applies the standards of judicial review. In considering whether the decision is proportionate, the court confers a broad measure of discretion on the regulatory body. Courts have repeatedly echoed the statement by Vice-Chancellor Megarry in a boxing dispute in 1978 that judges should be “slow” to substitute their views for the “honest decisions of bodies exercising jurisdiction over sporting activities which those bodies are far better fitted to judge than the courts”.

The fourth principle of sports law, applied by Mr Justice Mackay, is that the courts will not be prepared to intervene at the last moment to grant an injunction to compel the regulatory body to allow an individual or team to participate in a sporting event if there has been delay in bringing the case to court. If an athlete is concerned about a regulatory barrier to participation (such as the life ban for those who have committed a doping offence), he cannot wait until he has satisfied the sporting criteria for eligibility (in Chambers’ case, running an Olympic qualifying time) before bringing the legal challenge.

That principle was stated by Mr Justice Carnwath, and approved by the Court of Appeal, in 1996 when Stevenage Borough Football Club failed by reason of delay in its challenge to the Football League rule that a team would not be promoted from the Football Conference unless its stadium satisfied defined criteria with which Stevenage did not comply. Stevenage had unreasonably delayed by waiting until they secured promotion by coming top of the Conference before bringing their legal action.

In a New Yorker cartoon by Jack Ziegler, a four-man bobsleigh team speeding through the snow and the ice has an additional member, a lawyer dressed in a suit and holding a briefcase, who tells them: “Look, I’m not saying it’s going to be today. But someday — someday — you guys will be happy that you’ve taken along a lawyer.” There are no gold medals for lawyers and judges at the Olympic Games. But when modern sport is afflicted by competitors who cheat, some who abuse referees and others who complain about slavery when they have eagerly signed five-year contracts that guarantee them a wage of well over £100,000 a week, sports law can make a small contribution to promoting the virtues of the Olympic spirit.

The author is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers in the Temple and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He represented the British Olympic Association in the Dwain Chambers case

David Pannick's column returns on September 11

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