“Aye, it has been a good year,” he said, “a very good year.” It had indeed. With Gibson’s astute guidance, in 1998 Walker had emerged as the latest world-class flying Scotsman, winning the European Cup 200m race in St Petersburg and the European championship 200m crown in Budapest. On the final day of the year, the Edinburgh sprinter had missed the 300 yards world record by 0.05sec on his home track, but before disappearing into the Hogmanay gloaming he pledged: “I’ll be back to break it next year.”
Walker, though, has not been back on track since – not for a competitive race, at any rate. For two years he has been fighting to clear his name of the drug-taking charge levelled against him when traces of nandrolone were found in a routine urine test The fight continues. Exonerated by UK Athletics but deemed guilty by the International Amateur Athletic Federation, Walker is pursuing court action following evidence provided by Professor Ron Maugham of Aberdeen University that athletes taking perfectly legal supplements can produce metabolites of nandrolone in sufficient quantities to register positive tests (after two days of tests and dietary supplementation, one guinea-pig athlete produced a greater volume of the offending substance than the amount which got Walker banned).In the meantime, Walker has served his suspension.

This afternoon he returns to competition, in the Scottish indoor championships at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. He does so with some trepidation, and not just because his plans to race 400m today and in the AAA indoor championships in Birmingham next weekened, instead of his specialist distance, have been ruined by the lingering effects of a flu bug. Walker’s great concern as he prepares to run in the 200m heats is the ground he has lost in his two-year absence, the assurance and sharp racing edge of a European champion.”There are demons of doubt because I haven’t raced for so long,” he confessed last week “It’s going to weigh heavily on me. I know I’ve still got the ability, but you have to have a level of fitness before you can get that competitive edge.

The level I go back at is not the level I left at – it’s a pain in the backside having to climb all the way back up again.”It’s a pain in the backside for Gibson too. It took the veteran sprint coach eight years ofpatient toil to make Walker a European champion, only Britain’s third at 200m, following Brian Shenton and John Regis. He first met Walker at the Scottish schools’ championships in 1990, when he invited the 16-year-old sprinting novice – at the time a rugby-playing team-mate of Gregor Townsend in the Scottish schools’ XV – to join his training group at Meadowbank. In his job as an estimator in the construction industry, Gibson worked on the building of the Edinburgh track for the Commonwealth Games in 1970. His own track and field roots are in the professional running scene north of the border, as a competitor in handicap events from 90m up to the half-mile, and more notably as a coach who has trained four winners of the prestigious New Year Sprint race in Edinburgh, among them the emerging Walker back in 1995.Now, at the age of 68, it is Gibson’s task to help Walker emerge as a high-speed force for a second time. “It has been difficult to keep Dougie motivated over the two years,” he said. “The mental side of it has been the worst, although Dougie has handled himself pretty well I think.

Physically, he’s trained hard and kept himself in reasonably good shape, but you can’t really get in the right shape unless you’re racing. It’ll take a wee while to get back.”We’re looking for a pretty good season in the summer to build his confidence back up again for next year. In 1998 he was frightened of nobody, with the number of races he won. That has to be built up again and it can only come with racing. It would take at least half a dozen races in the summer before I would expect him to be anywhere near really sharp.”Walker will have to be reasonably sharp today to fend off his two principal rivals, Brian Doyle, who broke his 200m record in the Scottish east districts championships last weekend, and Mark Hylton, who won the 400m at the Birmingham Games in 46.78sec on Sunday.

Hylton, the 1997 European Under-23 champion at 400m, is on the comeback trail himself following a positive nandrolone test, although he escaped a ban because of a testing irregularity.Walker, having struggled at longer distances in training since suffering from flu at the turn of the year, may not now join Hylton and the in-form Daniel Caines in the 400m at the AAA Indoor Championships in Birmingham next Saturday and Sunday. His sole concern is to get back into the competitive groove again.He has spoken in public not just of “demons of doubt” but of the temptation of “walking away” from the sport, though Gibson laughed at the suggestion “I don’t think so,” he said. “Dougie’s obviously had doubts over the two years but I don’t think he’ll walk away No chance.”Walker’s frustrations are obvious. He has run up a six-figure legal bill, lost an estimated £400,000 in appearance money and endorsements and missed out on a shot at Olympic gold. Above all, he has burned with indignation “for being punished for something I didn’t do”. He no longer risks taking any supplements.At 27, though, the flying Scotsman is looking to make up for lost time – and looking towards the European Championships in Munich next year, when his 200m title will be on the line “That’s Dougie’s big aim,” his coach said.