The choice of a multiplex cinema as the venue for the launch of a new athletics magazine could not have been more appropriate, given that the sport is at present weaving a course between low farce and High Court drama. With a legal thriller imminent as Dwain Chambers waits to learn his Olympic fate, Lord Coe gave a candid assessment of the situation. “It's a pain in the arse and we shouldn't be having to deal with it now,” he said.

Coe was reunited with Steve Ovett, his old sparring partner from the 1980s, at the launch of Spikes, a magazine and website backed by the IAAF, the world governing body, and UK Athletics (UKA), the domestic equivalent. They were there to talk about the days when the world stopped to watch a chalk-and-cheese rivalry spill over into sporting gold, but ended up talking about Chambers. The sprinter, who completed a two-year drugs ban in 2005, hopes to overturn the BOA bylaw banning for life all convicted dopers from competing in the Olympic Games.

Coe and Ovett were once painted as polar opposites, but they were in agreement over the importance of bylaw 25. Coe, who is a vice-president of the IAAF as well as chairman of the London 2012 organising committee, said that it would be inappropriate for him to sign the petition backing the bylaw, but made his position blindingly clear. “I don't think he [Chambers] should be challenging and I don't think he should be there [in Beijing],” he said.

“I actually think that a governing body or sports organisation has to do whatever it feels is necessary to maintain the integrity of the sport. I don't think that should be challenged. That's the primary purpose of sport. For too many years I've heard the primary concern is for the athlete, but actually it's not - the primary concern is the wellbeing of the sport.”

A statement from Chambers's legal team, who filed papers with the High Court yesterday against the BOA, read: “Mr Chambers will seek, from the court, a declaration that the bylaw is unenforceable; a declaration that he is eligible for inclusion in Team GB for Beijing 2008; and an order that, subject to his achieving first or second place at the UK trials, he be included in Team GB for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

“The basis of Mr Chambers' claim is that the bylaw is an unreasonable restraint of trade in that it goes further than is reasonably necessary for protecting the interests of [the] BOA and the public; and further, that the bylaw is inherently unfair and unreasonable given the surrounding circumstances.”

Coe begged to differ and, with the Olympic trials only a week away, said that he was saddened that the countdown to Beijing was being overshadowed by a courtroom sideshow. “We are in a six-week period of stuff that we shouldn't be,” he said at the O2 cinema in East London.

He reaffirmed the IAAF's commitment to changing its rules regarding first-time doping offenders. “We have got to get it [the ban] from two years to four,” he said. “We drove a big chunk of it through [last year], giving us the leeway to go to four in serious circumstances, but we want that written down properly. It will take a year or two to get there, but we will get there.”

The BOA yesterday stated its intention to “vigorously and unequivocally defend its lifetime ban on drug cheats who have brought themselves and their sports into disrepute”. UKA, meanwhile, stated that it supported the bylaw, but would accept a High Court ruling freeing Chambers to go to the Olympics.