Justin Gatlin can keep running, but cheaters don’t escape their pasts

Backlash from two doping suspensions may never go away for American sprinter despite his attempts to unseat Usain Bolt, who is seen as the sport’s superhero, writes Osman Samiuddin.

USA’s Justin Gatlin prepares to compete in a men’s 200-metre heat yesterday at Beijing. The final for the event is Thursday. Adiran Dennis / AFP

As much as the 100-metre race at the Athletics World Championships should be about Usain Bolt, it is not. Bolt, after all, did what a majority expected him to, even if those expectations were not as rock solid as they might have been two years ago.

He definitely did what everyone fervently hoped he would, which, primarily, was to beat Justin Gatlin and in the process defeat the Dark Side. He did it and reaffirmed his position among the greatest athletes of all time. That is a happy place to be in, for now, forever.

But more and more, in its aftermath, that race feels like it was actually about Gatlin. Because, setting aside the short-term answer of the 200m duel in Thursday’s final, what does he do now? Where does Gatlin go?

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Comic-book villains generally have the decency to die or go to jail. Gatlin, who has become one as much as Bolt is a superhero, is not facing either fate. He has to keep living, competing.

That, actually, may be the worst punishment. Because he will continue to compete in a sport in which the new chief, Sebastian Coe, has said he is “queasy” at the prospect of Gatlin triumphs.

Gatlin will do so in an environment where he has been openly – and pre-emptively – branded the most unpopular world champion. After he lost the race to Bolt on Sunday, and at that level they do not win silver as much as lose gold, Gatlin’s mother was heckled in the crowd by a spectator as he was being awarded his medal.

Most of anything that will ever be written or said about him will include the descriptor “a two-time dope cheat” or some variant thereof.

The harsh circumstances of his first ban, when he tested positive because he was a long-time user of medicine for Attention Deficit Disorder, will not usually get a mention. Nor will the fact that the US Anti-Doping Agency conceded Gatlin did not cheat and nor did he intend to.

So what should a man do once he has served his punishment and returned? Go away and never race again? Curl up and die?

One thing he might think about doing is to not win anything. Not because it will be a great triumph in the grand battle against doping but because imagine what he might have to go through if his losing sparks such reactions?

This race was about Gatlin because, despite the presence of three others who have been punished for doping, it was on Gatlin that nearly all outrage was directed.

Maybe it was because he has not been as contrite as Tyson Gay for example, who has acknowledged publicly his mistakes. More likely it is just that Gatlin has been far better than Gay, Asafa Powell and Mike Rodgers, the other tainted finalists.

To be skeptical of what Gatlin is doing now is understandable. You do not need to be a sports scientist to understand that a man running faster and faster as he grows older is, historically, atypical.

It is not impossible, and there are theories that suggest a four-year break has helped him by resting his body. But there is also credible research on the lasting effects of steroid use, though, presumably, the others also stand to benefit.

The kind of rabid reactions, however, at the prospect of his triumph, and the glee at his loss only highlight the moral knot sports gets itself into at these moments.

How, for instance, would the world have reacted if Bolt finished ahead of Gatlin but lost to Gay or Powell? If Gatlin was not so prominent and had not made the finals, would the race still have been one for the soul of athletics?

It is unlikely Gatlin will find much solace in any victory, just as he will not find any in defeat. “There’s no end to this,” he said in an interview with Sports Illustrated in June.

He was right. He is stuck in this hellish loop. Nothing will make things better, not gold medals at the worlds, not silver medals at the Olympics, not a million clean tests – and he has been tested 59 times since his return in 2010. He will keep sprinting but will never outrun himself.

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