The British Olympic gold medal athlete, Mr Linford Christie, accepted damages of £40,000 and his legal costs of £26,000 yesterday, in settlement of his libel action over a magazine article that alleged he had taken banned drugs to enhance his performance on the sports field.
But the decision means Mr Christie faces a possible legal bill of £250,000 because he refused a settlement offer from one of the magazine's distributors last October.
In an article for the now defunct Spiked magazine in 1995, the former armed robber, Mr John McVicar, alleged Mr Christie had taken performance-enhancing drugs. No damages were awarded against Mr McVicar after he withdrew any direct suggestion of cheating but held there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Mr Christie had taken drugs.
Outside the High Court in London, Mr Christie said he was very happy about the decision and "didn't have a doubt for one minute" about the outcome of the libel action.
"I have always been clean. It is a great day for British athletics and all athletes competing out there on the highest level. My idea was not to make money. I had tried very hard and then someone said that I was a cheat. I don't like it. This was never about damages - it was about my reputation. My reputation is very, very important to me," Mr Christie said.
Earlier, Mr Christie's counsel, Mr Patrick Moloney QC, told Mr Justice Popplewell the damages would not be paid by Mr McVicar, but by Wiltshire (Bristol) Ltd, the group which published the article, "How did Linford get this good?", and the newspaper outlets, W.H. Smith and Johnson News. The three companies must also pay Mr Christie's legal costs, while Mr McVicar will have to pay the costs of the 14-day trial, which could reach £200,000. Mr McVicar is to appeal against the order to pay the costs.
The details of Mr Christie's legal bill emerged at the end of the trial. Johnson News made the settlement offer last October and can now claim £115,000 in costs from Mr Christie because it has already paid into the court a greater sum than it has been ordered to pay in damages.
Mr Moloney told the court the jury had decided the article represented "very serious and justifiable libel", and Mr Christie's good name, and in particular his complete innocence of drug-taking, had been vindicated. The High Court jury found by a majority of 10 to two that Mr Christie was defamed in the article, agreeing that the article meant "Mr Christie is a cheat who regularly used banned performance-enhancing drugs to improve his success in athletic competition", and further that the article was untrue.
Counsel for the printers Wiltshire (Bristol) Ltd, Ms Victoria Sharp, said the company was "completely unaware" the magazine contained a libellous article. Counsel for the distributors also insisted they were "wholly unaware" of the nature of the article.
Mr Christie, who works as an athletics coach, won the respect of the British sporting community during an illustrious career in which he became Britain's most successful athlete. Despite threatening to retire several times, at the age of 32 he became the oldest man to win the gold medal for the 100 metres at the Barcelona Olympics. When he retired from competition last year after leading the British men's team to their second European Cup title in Munich, he had won 23 championship medals, of which 10 were gold medals.
He wrote in his autobiography, To be Honest with You, that as a young man he believed he did not have to train to be successful: "I reckoned I had all the talent in the world. Guys who were training couldn't beat me. So why did I need to bother? Training was so tedious."