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Justin Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic 100-meter champion and 2005 double World Champion (100m and 200m) who has been under a doping suspension since May 2006 after a failed testosterone test, will receive support from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) when he appeals his ban — originally set at eight years in August 2006 by a U.S. arbitration panel — to the Court of Arbitration in Sport, an international body.
With this announcement, Gatlin now has both the IAAF and, oddly, the U.S. Anti-Doping Association (USADA) advocating for his reinstatement. Specifically at issue is whether Gatlin’s 2006 positive may be considered a first violaton, which would require that Gatlin’s 2001 positive test for a banned stimulant to be retroactively ignored owing to Gatlin’s previously documented ADHD. The IAAF reinstated Gatlin in 2002 after he served about half of the standard two years on the sidelines for a first offense, and his career quickly blossomed.
An appeal in January reduced the original eight-year ban — which, in accordance with IAAF rules pertaining to second offenses, could well have been a lifetime ban instead — to four. If Gatlin’s new appeal is successful, he’ll be eligible to compete in the U.S. Olympic Team Track and Field Trials, which will be held in June in Eugene, Oregon.
The entire affair is something of a curiosity. It would be one thing if Gatlin were simply appealing a positive doping result — i.e., if he were hoping to overturn a nascent or impending suspension. But here is a man whose entire doping history has been interpreted and reinterpreted in a variety of jurisdictions and who, regardless of whether or not he took stimulants on purpose seven years ago, seems almost certain to have knowingly juiced with testosterone before being caught in 2006.
For better or for worse, though — and many in elite track circles believe that Gatlin, while technically as guilty as the next doper, is more likely than most to have been victimized by his various handlers — with both an adamant drug-testing body and the world’s sole authority on elite-level track both in Gatlin’s corner, betting against his reinstatement would seem like an act of folly.