Gatlin likely won’t defend Olympic title

Sprinter Justin Gatlin got his doping ban reduced, but not by enough to make him eligible to defend his Olympic 100-meter title this year.

An arbitration panel, in a 53-page ruling released Tuesday, reduced the 25-year-old sprinter’s potential eight-year ban to four. With the ban set to expire May 24, 2010, it means Gatlin would be on the sidelines for the Beijing Olympics in August.

Still, the panel left open the possibility of a further reduction.

The three-member panel unanimously ruled Gatlin committed a doping offense when he tested positive for excessive testosterone in April 2006, but the sprinter’s first doping offense in 2001 troubled the group.

If that doping violation were erased, that would make Gatlin’s 2006 case his first offense, clearing the way for a further reduced ban.

First doping offenses often result in a two-year ban, which would make him eligible to run in May, a month before the U.S. Olympic trials. Gatlin has six months to appeal.

“I’m a fighter and I’ve been a fighter from the very beginning and I’m going to continue to fight,” Gatlin told The Washington Post. “I know in my heart I haven’t done anything wrong.

“I have been robbed. I have been cheated of an opportunity to finish my career.”

The panel called the circumstances surrounding Gatlin’s first offense “the real dilemma.”

As a 19-year-old competitor at the world junior championships, Gatlin tested positive for amphetamines, part of a prescribed medication he was taking for attention deficit disorder. Gatlin had stopped taking the medicine a few days before the competition, but it didn’t clear his system, according to the case records. He received a two-year ban.

The International Association of Athletics Federations, the sport’s world governing body, later reinstated Gatlin after he had served only one year of the ban but never specifically said Gatlin had “no fault” in the case.

USADA characterized Gatlin’s reinstatement as a reduction in the ban whereas Gatlin contended it vacated the finding of a doping offense. The panel said Gatlin could go through an appeals process to seek a finding of no fault in the first case or ask the IAAF for a clarification on its earlier ruling.

“The actions of the IAAF clearly suggest at a minimum, a finding of ‘no significant fault’ in 2001,” the panel said. “However, there is no evidence from which this panel may determine that a finding of ‘no fault’ under the current WADA standard was made or could be inferred.”