Renaldo Nehemiah

The truth: Justin Gatlin, from despair to destiny

The truth: Justin Gatlin, from despair to destiny

LONDON — They introduced Justin Gatlin to the Olympic Stadium crowd here Sunday evening, just before they put a gold medal around his neck, before The Star-Spangled Banner played in his honor, and along with some cheers a chorus of boos rang out.

The cheers — great. The boos — this fell somewhere between disappointing and reprehensible. Olympic-style sport is not the English Premier League, the NFL or NBA. It is supposed to be about promoting three key values: friendship, excellence and respect.

Saturday’s men’s 100-meter final immediately became arguably the biggest gold-medal victory in the history of the event. Gatlin defeated the sport’s biggest legend, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt. It’s how the race will forever be remembered: who beat Bolt, and in Bolt’s last individual 100? Gatlin. And who, before Saturday, was the last guy ever to beat Bolt? Gatlin, in Rome in 2013.

Justin Gatlin: an all-time tale of redemption and respect

Justin Gatlin: an all-time tale of redemption and respect

LONDON — Act II of the morality play shall now commence, and if there is justice in this world, let it rain Justin Gatlin’s way. He is deserving, more than deserving, of your appreciation and, more, your respect.

A few days ago, before the start of these 2017 IAAF world championships, Usain Bolt had said he was both “unbeatable” and “unstoppable,” adding, “Without a doubt. If I show up at a championship, you know that I’m ready to go.”

Without a doubt, the track and field establishment wanted Bolt — king of the scene, a “genius,” according to IAAF president Sebastian Coe — to win Saturday night’s 100 meters, Bolt’s last hurrah, the final competitive 100 the greatest sprinter humankind has ever seen had said he intended to run.

Time for this 9-second reminder: Justin Gatlin is real, and genuine

Time for this 9-second reminder: Justin Gatlin is real, and genuine

SACRAMENTO, California — Five years ago, on the last night of July, Bruce Springsteen played an epic show in Helsinki, more than four hours, his longest show ever.

He and the E Street Band played 33 songs, one of which, My City of Ruins, ran to 18 minutes and 26 seconds. That song, as Bruce describes it that night, was originally written about his New Jersey hometown “trying to get back on its feet” but had since become about so much more: “what you lose, what you hold onto, the spirits that remain forever and the things you have to let go.”

Racing to a kidney transplant

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BEIJING — These 2015 world track and field championships at the Bird’s Nest drew more than 1,900 athletes from more than 200 nations.

Every single one of them has a story. But no one has a story quite like Aries Merritt, your 2015 110-meter hurdles bronze medalist. In just a few days, he's going to have a kidney transplant.

Merritt, the 2012 Olympic 110 hurdles champion as well as the world record-holder, 12.80 seconds, run in Brussels that same Olympic year, took third in the 110 final Friday night, in a season-best 13.04.

Aries Merritt after taking third place in the 110 hurdles // Getty Images

Sergey Shubenkov of Russia ran a national-record 12.98 for the win. Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment took second, in 13.03.

This coming Tuesday, back in the United States, Merritt is due to have a kidney transplant. His sister, LaToya Hubbard, is to provide the donor kidney.

"I feel like my bronze medal is a gold medal, to be honest," Merritt said.

Also Friday, the American Ashton Eaton ran a ridiculous 45-flat in the 400 to top off his first day of the two-day test that is the 10-event decathlon. That’s a world record for the decathlon 400; Bill Toomey had run 45.63 in 1968.

That 45-flat would have gotten Eaton seventh in the open 400, won Wednesday night by South Africa's Wayde Van Niekerk.

After Day One, Eaton has 4703 points. He is on pace to break his own world record in the decathlon, 9039 points, set at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Ashton Eaton at the end of his decathlon 400 // Getty Images

In the women's 200, Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands, a former heptathlon standout, raced to the win in a 21.63, a world championships record.

Only Florence Griffith-Joyner and Marion Jones have run the women's 200 faster. Flo-Jo ran 21.34 and 21.56 at the 1988 Seoul Olympics; Jones' 21.62, run in 1998, was done at altitude, in Johannesburg.

"I know I'm clean and I know I work very hard for it," Schippers said afterward when asked about the other two.

Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands celebrates her 200 victory // Getty Images

Asked if she envisioned ever going back to the heptathlon, Schippers laughed and said, "I don't think so."

Jamaicans Elaine Thompson, in 21.66, and Veronica Campbell-Brown, in 21.97, went 2-3.

Just before these championships got underway last week, Merritt disclosed — in a story posted on the IAAF website — that he suffers from a rare genetic disorder found predominantly in African-Americans.

His condition was aggravated by a virus that had attacked his kidneys and, as well, his bone marrow.

Kidney function, he said, is down to under 20 percent. That's both kidneys. He said late Friday, "They’re not filtering properly. They don’t work."

Earlier this week, he had told reporters, “Just to be keeping that secret, it felt like a weight had been lifted when I was able to share it.

“The positive outreach has been amazing. I love running, I love competing. This is my life and here I am.”

Pause for just a moment. Think about all this.

That Merritt is here is, in the first instance, remarkable.

That he made the final all the more so, winning his semifinal Thursday night, in a then-season best 13.08.

That he won a medal — a testament to his considerable will.

“I am only 75 percent physically healthy,” Merritt had said after the semifinal. “That should be enough to give me a medal."

Seriously? For real: "I am still keeping it smooth. For the final there is nothing I want to change. I want to stay consistent. My rhythm is coming back — I am glad that it is coming back for the world championships.”

The sprint hurdles make for some of the great, truly great, races on the track and field program. Anything can happen, and often does.

The Americans had been expected to dominate both the men's 110 and women's 100. Didn't happen.

In the first women’s 100 semifinal Friday, for instance, the American Dawn Harper-Nelson crashed into the second hurdle and down to the track, rolling into the third hurdle; she is the Beijing 2008 gold and London 2012 silver medalist. She walked away, apparently unhurt.

For the record: Dawn Harper-Nelson is one of the classiest acts in track and field. This is what she said afterward: “I am sorry I let people down.”

Dawn Harper-Nelson of the United States falls as, left to right, Alina Talay of Belarus, Sharika Nelvis of the United States and Danielle Williams of Jamaica keep on during a women's 100 hurdles  semifinal  // Getty Images

In the next semi, another American, Kendra Harrison, was disqualified for a false start. She was not happy about it, and took a good long time leaving the track.

In the final, here was the finish, a result absolutely no one could have predicted:

Jamaica’s Danielle Williams with a personal-best 12.57 for the win, Cindy Roleder of Germany a personal-best 12.59, two-hundredths back, and Alina Talay of Belarus in third with 12.66, another national record.

The defending champion, American Brianna Rollins, finished fourth, in 12.67.

"The last years, you saw the trend," with Americans expected to dominate the women's sprint hurdles, Talay said, adding, "It was really tough to fight against them. You can see that European girls can do that, and we proved that today."

"And Caribbean girls," Williams said.

The men’s 110, particularly over the past few seasons, has been that singular event in which the top competitors in the world line it up and race each other, meet after meet.

By contrast, Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin had not run against each other in the sprints — with the exception of the World Relays in the Bahamas this past May — since 2013. And in that relay, Gatlin ran the second leg for the U.S., Bolt the anchor leg for Jamaica.

Bolt, in a news conference Thursday night after winning the 200, Gatlin taking second, just as they had done in the 100 Sunday night, noted that he had been injured for most of 2014 and had to work himself back this year back into winning form.

“People were saying I was ducking Justin Gatlin most of the season,” he said, demurring, “It makes no sense to compete when I’m not at my best and Justin Gatlin is at his best. I’m going to lose.”

The first 110 world record, 15 seconds, dates to 1912. The benchmark now for a championship performance is 13 seconds, or under. Since they have been keeping records, before Friday night only 18 guys had gone sub-13.

Shubenkov makes it 19.

Three years ago, at his best, Merritt was essentially unbeatable. He won in London in 12.92 — after running 12.93 three times in a row before that, including at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

About a month after the Games, on September 7, 2012, Merritt ran that 12.80 in Brussels — his form and fluidity a thing of beauty whether you are a hard-core track fan, or just casually dropping in.

In that race, Merritt dropped seven-hundredths of a second off the standing world record, 12.87, which Dayron Robles of Cuba had run in 2008. It made for the record’s largest single time drop since 1981, when the American Renaldo Nehemiah became the first guy ever to run under 13; he went 12.93, cutting seven-hundredths off his own mark, 13-flat, which he had run two years before.

The next year, Merritt ran much, much slower.

After the 2013 world championships in Moscow — he finished sixth in the high hurdles — Merritt checked into the emergency room at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

That was October.

He didn’t leave the hospital until the next April.

The first concern was treating the virus. After that, the doctors’ focus was his kidneys.

"When they told me I'd never run again, my whole world ended in my mind," he said.

The condition, Merritt said, is called "collapsing FSGS," for "focal segmental glomerulosclerosis." He is obviously thinner than he was three years ago -- six pounds, he said. Too, he has undertaken a significant lifestyle change -- he can't process potassium so he can't, for instance, drink orange juice.

"It has been a struggle," he said Friday night. "It has been very tough for me these last couple years. Just to be here at these world championships shows I’m mentally tough and I have the heart of a champion."

In May 2014, Merritt showed up again to race. Again, the month before, he had been in the hospital. He ran 13.78 at the Steve Scott Invitational in California.

At the end of the summer of 2014, back in Brussels, he finished seventh in the Diamond League final. He said he was thrilled.

This year, he ran 13.12 at the Prefontaine Classic, in Eugene, Oregon, as May turned to June. A few weeks later, at the U.S. nationals, he qualified for the worlds by finishing third, in 13.19, behind David Oliver and Ronnie Ash.

Oliver had eased into Friday’s final with a 13.15 in the heats, 13.17 in his semi.

Ash never made it out of the start in the rounds. He flinched, according to the electronic timing system, and was DQ’d. Like Harrison Friday night, Ash did not think he had flinched. As the official IAAF report would later note in a delicate reference, “The American was not too happy at the decision and several minutes of confusion ensued before he finally left the track.”

Merritt went 13.25 to win his heat. Then, again, 13.08 for that win in the semis.

Omar McLeod of Jamaica, left, and  Merritt in the 110 semifinal

In the final, Oliver hit the first hurdle and got knocked out of rhythm. He finished seventh, in 13.33.

From that first hurdle, the race was clearly between Shubenkov, Parchment and Merritt.

Merritt, top, at the photo finish // photo courtesy Seiko

Shubenkov, who is completely fluent in conversational English, said afterward, "It was a little bit of a surprise for me. It’s not every day a guy from Russia goes and wins the world championship in the hurdles and goes sub-13."

Both he and Parchment expressed admiration that someone in Merritt's condition could run, much less make the podium at a world championships.

"I still can not imagine how this is possible," Shubenkov said, adding a moment later, "Just now I learned he has such a severe condition. It's just, I don't know, beyond my realization. I can't think about it -- how it's possible."

Parchment: "I think he’s a very strong guy. To be here still competing … it’s really great, and i congratulate him on getting a medal here.

"I hope," he also said, "his surgery will go well and we will see him next year … in Rio."

Rivals, respect: Bolt comes up big, again, in 200

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BEIJING — Usain Bolt defeated Justin Gatlin in the men’s 200 Thursday night at the 2015 world track and field championships, running the best time in the world this year, 19.55 seconds, to win hands-down.

If the result of this big-time showdown had been the other way around, if Gatlin had won, would earthquakes and tsunamis roil the planet? Would sinkholes swallow up large towns? Meteors flash across the sky?

Of course not.

Gatlin finished in 19.74. Just as he did in the 100 Sunday night, Gatlin lost his form — this time, about six steps from the finish — but managed to keep it together enough for second.

Usain Bolt wins the men's 200 // Getty Images

What happened Thursday, same as Sunday, amounted to great sport and, no small thing, great theater. Bolt yet again proved his worth. And Gatlin proved he is a worthy rival.

That’s great for track and field.

Gatlin on Bolt: "I have nothing against Usain. He is a great competitor. A competitor as myself — you know, you look for that. You look to be able to get pushed to your limits, to get pushed to the best times you can run.

"At the end of the day," Gatlin continued, "when you are like 45, 50 years old, and you retire, you want to look back and say, you know what? That guy right there, you helped make history with this guy, helped push him and he pushed you to be a better athlete."

 "I have no problem with Justin Gatlin," Bolt said. "He is a competitor."

If Bolt doesn't have a problem with Gatlin, this simple question: why should anyone else?

Bolt also said of Gatlin, "He talks a lot. I have noticed over the years. But that’s just who he is. I’ve noticed that in the lead-up to a championship, he’s going to say a lot of stuff. But after the championships, he confuses you, you feel like he is your best friend."

Track and field too often can find itself in a marginalized niche, a once-every-two- or four-years-thing. The 200, and other events Thursday, offered precisely what the sport needs: big-time stars, and rivalries, and expressed respect.

Allyson Felix, for instance, moving up from the 200 to the 400, exploded from the start in Lane 6 and put on a sprinting clinic to win in 49.26, a 2015 world-best time. Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas took second in 49.67, Shericka Jackson of Jamaica third in 49.99.

The 400 victory made for the ninth world championship gold of Felix’s stellar career. Let the debate begin now in earnest about whether the schedule at next summer's Rio Olympics can be shuffled around so that she can run both the 200 and 400.

In a news conference, Felix was asked the secret not just to her success but her longevity. Simple, she said -- "to be hungry, to be passionate" about sprinting and winning.

Allyson Felix winning the 400 // Getty Images

In the triple jump, American Christian Taylor, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist, set a new American record, 18.21 meters, or 59 feet, 9 inches, in a competition that -- right before the women's 400 and men's 200 -- seemingly captivated everyone at the Bird’s Nest.

That 18.21 is the second-longest jump in history. Britain’s Jonathan Edwards went 18.29, 60-0 1/4, in 1995. The American record had stood for 19 years: 18.09, 59-4 1/4, Kenny Harrison, to win Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996.

Christian Taylor after winning the triple jump // Getty Images

Second went to Cuba’s Pedro Pichardo, 17.73, 58-2.

"It was a great fight," Taylor said. "I saved it until my last jump."

The 2008 Olympic champ, Portugal’s Nelson Evora, grabbed third on his final jump, a season-best 17.52, or 57-5 3/4. The American Omar Craddock had to settle for fourth, 17.37, 57 feet even.

On Sunday in that 100, Bolt had defeated Gatlin by one-hundredth of a second in a race that far too many billed as a contest between “good” and “evil,” Bolt caricatured as “good” in this made-up morality farce, Gatlin as “evil.”

As things got underway Thursday night, Bolt, announced to a huge roar, kissed the “Jamaica” on his jersey. Gatlin made kissing motions, then “ran” with his hands, also greeted by cheers.

For all the noise about the 100, the 200 has long been Bolt’s preferred race. In Lane 6, he got out of the blocks without incident — he can be a slow starter but not Thursday — and then, coming down the stretch, powered home for the victory, the fifth-fastest 200 ever.

The last time Bolt had run a 200 under 19.6? August 23, 2012.

"The 100 is really for the people, for my coach," Bolt said, "and the 200 is for me."

Earlier this year, Gatlin had run a 19.57. But not this night.

That 19.74, however, is no small thing: it made for the second-fastest non-Bolt time ever at a world championships. The American Walter Dix ran 19.53 at the worlds in Daegu, South Korea, in 2011.

Third place Thursday went to South Africa's Anaso Jobodwana. He ran a national-record 19.87.

The photo finish of the men's 200, with Usain Bolt way ahead // photo courtesy Seiko

To reiterate the obvious:

Bolt runs big on the big stage, and has ever since he burst onto the world scene here at the Bird’s Nest in those Olympics seven long years ago. But for his false start at those 2011 Daegu worlds, he has won virtually everything — 100, 200, 4x100 — at every major meet since, worlds or Olympics. (The U.S. team won the 4x100 at the World Relays this past May, Gatlin running second for the Americans, Bolt anchor for the Jamaicans.)

Bolt is also thoroughly charismatic. He has made “To Di World” a pose recognized the world over.

Bolt got tangled up with a cameraman amid the post-race festivities. No harm, no foul, he said: "I'm fine. It's all fine."

Post-race, a barefoot Bolt doing his thing // Getty Images

The two-dimensional depiction of Bolt as “good,” it must be emphasized, depends on two things:

One, that he is running clean.

The most, though, that anyone can say about Bolt that he has never tested positive.

That is a long, long way from a guarantee of anything.

To be clear, that's by way of explanation, not accusation; moreover, it must be stressed that nothing has surfaced that would link Bolt to anything undue.

That said, when it comes to the Jamaican track and field landscape, no one, least of all in the media, can be assured of any guarantees; that's too much of an ask given the structural deficiencies that have plagued the Jamaican anti-doping infrastructure, and its woeful lack of testing over the years.

The second point to consider: track and field is not, as some like the chief sports feature writer for the Daily Telegraph, the English newspaper, would have it, a moralistic reflection on athletic piety or purity.

It never has been.

The history of the ancient Olympics in Greece makes that plain.

As David Wallechinsky writes in his authoritative book on the modern Games, "The use of performance-enhancing drugs and concoctions by athletes is nothing new,” noting that the winner of the 1904 Olympic marathon, Thomas Hicks, an English-born brass worker from Cambridge, Massachusetts, “was administered multiple doses of strychnine and brandy during the race.”

Fast forward to Ben Johnson in Seoul, in 1988.

And the BALCO scandal in the United States some 12 years ago.

And allegations now about blood doping in countries around the world.

Track and field, like any enterprise, has its good points — its very, very good points, indeed — and some not so good.

This, then, is what follows logically:

Things in track and field, as in all spheres in life, are not simply susceptible to a reduction of good and bad, black and white, yes or no.

If Bolt can be depicted as a hero — have at it, if you want to.

The same, though, for Gatlin — for years, he has been a study in humility and courage, working his way back from the embarrassment and shame, indeed the mortification, of two doping positives.

Redemption is just as powerful a lesson as anything, and for anyone. Who goes through life without mistakes?

Gatlin’s agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, told the BBC,  “He has humbled himself for months and months. It was never widely reported so people don't believe he has made amends or apologized."

Late Thursday, Nehemiah in an interview, said, "Consider the woman who’s afraid the man who’s coming home is going to beat her -- she's reading all this, realizing [Gatlin] is a fighter, he’s standing tall.

"That’s where the lessons can be learned. There are so many people who can look at this and say, wow, this guy has persevered through relentless criticism -- criticism that was heaped on him unfairly."

To carry the inquiry further — if Bolt is the “saviour of the sport,” as the British track and field Athletics Weekly blared in its front-page headline after the 100, what would have been the case had Gatlin prevailed Thursday night? Would Bolt personally be to blame for any and all ills the sport might confront?

Of course not. This is why the entire construct is not just completely absurd and over-the-top ridiculous but entirely unfair — to Bolt, to Gatlin and, moreover, anyone.

Further, what gets lost in the depiction of Bolt as “good” or Gatlin as “evil” is elemental: facts.

And with facts come context.

And nuance.

In the real world, these things matter.

Anyone in the public eye deserve these things, at the very least.

Gatlin’s first positive test came in 2001, when he was 19, for prescription medicine he was taking for attention-deficit disorder.

As for the second, a testosterone pop in 2006, it makes much more sense upon a read of the record — all of which is publicly available in a federal courthouse in Pensacola, Florida — to infer that the positive test may well have resulted from a shot or a pill, administered by assistant coach Randall Evans, the injection witnessed in person by coach Trevor Graham.

Graham is of course one of the central figures in the BALCO case.

There is no support in the record for the assertion that a massage therapist rubbed steroid cream on Gatlin. That theory, according to the documents, came from Graham.

Facts. They really matter, or at least you’d like to think so.

In that same column in the Telegraph, written by the paper’s chief sports feature writer, under a headline that declares Gatlin is a “bothersome impediment to athletics’ rehabilitation in the eyes of a jaded public” — absolutely not one bit of which is supported by any factual assertion — the column declares about Gatlin, “He has not had to reimburse any of the money that he earned during the time when he was found to have doped.”

Nehemiah, Sunday night, under the Bird’s Nest: “He never stole any money. When he got banned, he never ran another race.”

The set-up to that line about Gatlin’s finances, again from the Telegraph column: “What exactly constitutes payback in his case?” Then, after the line about reimbursement: “The damage he has suffered is purely reputational. This, when it comes to administering any kind of potent deterrent to dopers, is not enough.”

In Gatlin’s 2007 hearing stemming from the 2006 test, Nehemiah would testify that the second test cost Gatlin “5, 6 million dollars.” Gatlin, Nehemiah said, had grossed $1.549 million in 2005; projections in 2006 alone, the agent said, were for “anywhere from $2.5 to $3 million.”

As for payback?

Why is any sort of “payback” a thing? Payback does not equal deterrence. That is simply illogical, it being a maxim of legal theory that sanctions exist for four purposes: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation.

Payback is not making someone a villain because it suits an easy narrative. That’s grossly unfair.

At any rate, you want deterrence?

Five to six million dollars and four years out, humbling yourself by teaching 8-year-olds in and around Atlanta how to run — that’s powerful deterrence.

You know what else is important in reporting about these kinds of things? Consistency.

Another high-profile sprinter who got busted in the BALCO scandal, as all familiar with track and field would know: the British star Dwain Chambers.

After a lot of legal to and fro, Chambers was ultimately cleared again to run.

Earlier this year, the Telegraph included Gatlin on a list of what it called “the most hated sportsmen in the world,” a “sport-by-sport breakdown of the most loathsome individuals.”

Indeed, in the piece published Wednesday: "Any drugs cheats who decide to revive their careers must accept that it is their lot to endure a reception rife with suspicion and innuendo."

Here, just last year, after he won the British 100 meter championship, was this same newspaper, a different reporter at the byline, hero-making on Chambers:

“After the athletics season last year Chambers climbed Mont Blanc in support of the charity Teens Unite and he revealed the experience had given him the mental strength to keeping racing. ‘I’ve climbed many mountains, haven’t I? And fallen down a few,’ he said. ‘But I still keep standing. Climbing that mountain was for a different cause, but it showed me a lot about myself. That was a lot of pressure. I was scared, because any false slip I was a goner. I had to keep my wits about me. But doing that made me believe and understand that I can do anything.

‘I was totally out of my comfort zone, walking 250 [meters] up an hour. It normally takes me about 25 seconds to do that. But it was a real test of character for me and it’s given me the ability to still come out here and compete.’ "

Even more, last August from the European track and field championships in Zurich, here was the writer now designated the chief sports feature writer, after first describing Chambers as “avowedly reformed and ever-complex”:

“Once ostracized, Chambers has been accepted back into the fold due to the apparent sincerity of his contrition.”

Fair is, you know, fair.

Recognizing what he was up against coming into this meet, Gatlin acknowledged late Thursday, "It was never my intent to come to these championships and and try win over any fans or change the view of who I am. My intent was to come here and compete to the best of my abilities. That's what my job is.

"I think the people saw a different view of me: you know, I'm just a competitor, man. I have no ill will toward Usain, no ill will towards anybody. We have all worked very, very hard all season long, just trying to stay away from injury. And just get out there and run 9 seconds, run 19 seconds, and get on that podium. Mission accomplished.

"I came out of here with some hardware," he said. Now it's time "to get ready for the 4x100 and get ready for Rio."

Where Bolt and Gatlin, all things being equal, get to go at each other again. It's all good.

Cut Justin Gatlin some slack

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BEIJING — Dear friends and colleagues in the media, especially many of you in the British press: back off. Cut Justin Gatlin some real slack.

Instead of insight and the pursuit of the truth, what far too many of you have delivered instead is a simplistic caricature of events amid the 2015 world track and field championships that, regrettably, has led to the capacity to incite.

This is not good, not good at all, and if something serious happens — the warning shot was a heckler calling out Gatlin’s mom, of all people, while he was on the medal stand Monday night — it’s on you, each and all of you, in your repeated exposition of a binary “good” and “evil” narrative to the men’s 100 meters.

You don’t think such a thing is possible? Review violent events in tennis. All it takes is one crazy person.

Two nights after the epic 100, won by Bolt over Gatlin by one-hundredth of a second, the two were back center stage Tuesday night for the heats of the 200, Bolt winning his race in 20.28, Gatlin his in 20.19, both jogging to the finish.

Justin Gatlin after his 200 heat // Getty Images

Amid the action on the track, Gatlin’s agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, has said that Gatlin is considering a boycott of the British media. Candidly, such action would be fully justified. Generally speaking, their treatment of Gatlin has not just been unfair; it has been mean, indeed venomous.

If much of the British press has collectively decided they have no obligation to be fair to Gatlin — never mind the possibility, no matter how remote, of complimentary — then why would he have an obligation to interact with them?

As Nehemiah said after Sunday's race, in the tunnel underneath the Bird's Nest, "I feel badly about it because the human element is presenting itself in an ugly way. It’s really unfair."

Gatlin is the Athens 2004 Olympic 100 gold medalist, and Nehemiah said, "I just marvel at how prior to his ban and return, everybody loved him. He is a nice guy. He has never changed. Certain people in the media world paint him as an ogre. I’m like -- do you even know this man?"

To quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a different context but with words so apt here: "A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption."

As the great Jamaican sprint champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce put it after her victory Monday in the women's 100: “My message always is: no matter where you are from, no matter which past you have, it is all about your future and your goals.”

In this instance, an elemental truth ought to be so patently obvious: we do not live in a world where ogres are real, where we have to make up cautionary fairy tales masquerading as "morality plays." The truth itself is good enough, and the truth is that we live in a world that is not binary, not black and white. We live in a world of multilayered grays.

To portray Bolt as “good” and Gatlin, twice banned for doping, as “evil,” is thoroughly and dramatically irresponsible.

Four other guys ran in the 100 semifinals with time off for doping matters: Tyson Gay, Mike Rodgers, Femi Ogunode and Bolt’s own teammate, Asafa Powell. The Jamaicans named Powell a team captain! None of them got anywhere near the same level of vitriol Gatlin did. Why? Because Gatlin is faster?

To be fair: blame hardly rests on everyone in the British media. That would be overly broad. Sean Ingle of the Guardian, for instance, has repeatedly been moderate and straightforward in his reporting, including this report from the 100 final:

"It was inevitable that some would hail this a victory not just for Bolt but for clean athletics. It was understandable too, given Gatlin’s past – which includes a four-year ban for taking the banned steroid testosterone – and his startling present, which has seen him set personal bests in the 100m and 200m at 33.

"The danger is that it is both simplistic and lets other athletes off the hook. Remember 66 athletes at these world championships have served doping bans – including four in the 100m final. One victory from an athlete who has never tested positive will not change that."

This acknowledgement, too, from Tom Fordyce, the BBC's chief sports writer: "This was never good vs evil, as some tried to bill it in advance. Gatlin is a dope cheat, not a serial killer or child abuser."

Let's compare and contrast:

British legend Steve Cram, who has a lifetime of experience in the sport, both as athlete and broadcaster, shouting on the air for the BBC about Bolt’s victory as the Jamaican crossed the line, “Usain Bolt — it’s very, very tight but I think he has done it! He has saved his title, he’s saved his reputation, he may even have saved his sport. A super-hero, if he has won it. He is looking up. Usain Bolt, three times world champion!

“I’m looking around the whole stadium. I’m looking around the media tribunes,” meaning press row. “The former athletes that work in the media. Everybody on their feet.  The result that everybody wanted, except Justin Gatlin, I guess. How could we ever doubt [Bolt]?”

There is so much hyperbole there one hardly knows where to start.

Elsewhere in its pages, The Guardian quoted Cram in the second paragraph of another story on the race, under this headline: “Usain Bolt beats Justin Gatlin to 100m gold in ‘clash of good against evil’ "

More, meantime, from a different wing of the purportedly sober BBC:

No cheering in the press box? Here was the crew from BBC Live 5 Sport:  

The Telegraph, meanwhile, gave play to this tweet from the British 800-meter runner Michael Rimmer, who ran a 1:48.7 in the first round and was out:

The Telegraph, further: “This was a victory that touched a nerve across the sporting world and beyond. Athletics had its hero back and it was time to rejoice.”

The Daily Mail, the day before the race, published a story that said, in the opening paragraph: “ … stand by for sport as a freak show.” In the next paragraph, this reference: “… it’s Usain Bolt against the bearded lady, otherwise known as Justin Gatlin.” Next paragraph: “If Gatlin wins, it will be a terrible indictment of a sport that seems utterly at a loss about how to police itself. If Bolt wins, it will merely reinforce the idea that he is all that stands between athletics and oblivion.”

In its report on the race itself, under a headline that called Gatlin a “drugs cheat,” the Daily Mail declared that “by defeating the unashamed American, banned twice for drugs offenses and utterly repentant, [Bolt] landed a significant blow for clean athletes rallying against the dopers who steal their medals and in turn their money.”

The truth: referring to Gatlin, Nehemiah, speaking in the tunnel under the stadium after the 100 final, stressing, again, "He never stole any money. When he got banned, he never ran another race.”

Let us all be clear:

The best — the very best — that any of us can say about Bolt, who has been a charming and irrepressible champion since his first Olympic gold here at the Bird’s Nest seven years ago, is that he has never tested positive.

We cannot — repeat, not — say with certainty that he is “clean.”

For his part, Gatlin is not “evil.” That is over-the-top ridiculous.

Gatlin is a good guy. He got tagged twice for doping positives. The first, in 2001, came when he was 19, and was for Adderall, the prescription medicine he was taking for the attention-deficit disorder with which he had been diagnosed 10 years before.

The second, in 2006, was for testosterone, and under circumstances that have never been fully explained. The evidence in the matter does not corroborate the story that a massage therapist rubbed steroid cream on Gatlin; that, according to a read of the record, was first suggested by Gatlin’s then-coach Trevor Graham, whose credibility as a central figure in the BALCO matter has to be viewed dimly.

A more likely, if unproven, explanation is that the positive test came from a shot or a pill delivered while Gatlin was under the direct watch of Graham and assistant coach Randall Evans.

This unequivocal acknowledgment: the rules make it plain that Gatlin was liable for what’s in him, however it got there.

The rules were followed. Gatlin was sent away, into the wilderness, for four long years.

A read of the transcripts in the 2007 hearing that followed the 2006 test makes plain — from investigators to the arbitrators themselves — the belief that Gatlin did not knowingly ingest anything illicit.

When he found out he had tested positive, moreover, Gatlin immediately sought to help federal investigator Jeff Novitzky in Novitzky’s investigation of BALCO, agreeing to make undercover phone calls to Graham.

Yet the dozen or so calls Gatlin made got him no credit in his doping case — the rule at the time said that any such “substantial assistance” had to lead directly to an anti-doping agency “discovering or establishing” doping by another person.

Since that didn’t happen, Gatlin got no break.

You can maybe understand why that might -- to those who have long supported Gatlin -- seem a disconnect. Gatlin is a good guy who, when notified he had a problem, tried his very best to help the good guys do the right thing. And what did that get him for his effort? Nothing.

How does that ring in the balance of equities?

The thing about rules is this — without reference to real life, rules can easily become unjust.

This is why the call for lifetime bans is so tiresome.

Sports officials know this full well. Such bans come loaded with an assortment of challenges, including a violation of basic human rights. The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, reminded one and all of this very thing just last Friday, at a news conference here.

We live in the real world, everyone, not a world of judgment and moral high-mindedness where a young man with transgressions in his teens and early 20s has to live, re-live and keep living the past.

Gatlin, again, is now 33.

Who among us has not done things at 19, or 24, that they wish they could replay? Where is that understanding?

Where in the coverage was any attempt to portray the heartbreak Gatlin felt in 2006, and thereafter?

Or the courage it took to remain true to one’s self for the long years he was out of the sport, then the several more it took to build back to world-class speed?

Or Gatlin’s incredibly strong family ties — how his mother and father have been with him throughout the ups, the downs, everything?

That’s also why the heckling of his mother was so very wrong.

As Gatlin said Sunday night when he was asked why he went moments after the race to see his mother, Jeanette, “I didn’t say anything to my mother. Win or lose, that was my plan, to go embrace her. For the simple fact that my mother and my father,” Willie, a Vietnam vet, “have been through my ups and downs with me. For them, it has been a journey. It has been a journey for me. I’m so happy they can be at every championship I have been at. I love them. I love them.”

Where was that? Anywhere?

Or did it cut against the easy caricature of Gatlin as “evil” to write that, in fact, he is a real person, and that each and all of us are on a journey in life fraught with mistakes.

Let the words of Dr. King, as ever, ring out. The beauty — for Justin Gatlin, for all of us — is that life also offers opportunity and redemption.

Usain Bolt: still the 100 king

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BEIJING — Usain Bolt did Sunday night what Usain Bolt does best, winning the men’s 100 meters at the 2015 world track and field championships, crossing just one-hundredth of a second in front of Justin Gatlin.

This was not, for the record, a morality play. This was, simply, an excellent race.

For any and all worried about the future of track and field or who believed that the men’s 100 final at the Bird’s Nest made for a referendum on sport or life itself, be assured — the sun was going to come up Monday morning all over the world, whether Bolt or Gatlin prevailed. All is not right, or wrong, because of one-hundredth of a second.

Usain Bolt crosses just ahead of a flailing Justin Gatlin // Getty Images

And now we all have the delicious anticipation of a year-long build-up to the men’s 100 at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Not to mention the 200 here later this week.

This is all to the good for track and field. Indeed, it’s awesome. The race Sunday drew worldwide attention.

As Gatlin's agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, would say late Sunday night, "It’s what our sport sorely needs. A sport needs a rivalry. A photo finish like that is great for the sport.

"It elevates Bolt even more," Nehemiah said, adding with emphasis, "It elevates Gatlin even more."

Even the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, weighed in, saying after the race, “Congratulation to Usain Bolt for a historic victory. So great to see him winning in the Bird's Nest stadium again."

Gatlin and Bolt ran together down the track until, just a few meters from the end, a few strides out, Gatlin lost his form — a break in the technique that, all along, he had said was his key. Bolt ran hard to the line while Gatlin sought to keep driving and not wipe out.

Bolt: 9.79.

Gatlin: 9.80.

The American Trayvon Bromell and the Canadian Andre DeGrasse tied for third, at 9.911 — a sign, perhaps, that the next generation has arrived. Both are just 20 years old.

"I definitely think this was my hardest race," Bolt would say later.

Referring to Gatlin, Bolt said, "I could see him stumbling."

He cautioned, "All the stumbling, it could have helped him, momentum-wise. I had to lean at the right time, and I did just that."

Gatlin is now 33. Eleven years ago, at the 2004 Athens Olympics, he won the 100. At the 2005 Helsinki world championships, he won the 100 and 200. The next year, he got tagged with a positive test for testosterone under circumstances still not fully explained.

Gatlin spent four years out of the sport, then started working his way back: bronze in the 100 at the London 2012 Games, silver at the Moscow 2013 worlds, in both instances behind Bolt.

Gatlin — under the tutelage of Dennis Mitchell, himself a former champion sprinter — had not lost in 2014 or 2015.

Bolt, meantime, spent most of 2014 injured — he would run one 400 — and had run a limited number of times in 2015, posting a 9.87 earlier this year in London.

The experts thought it would be Gatlin all the way.

Indeed, Paddy Power, the online bookmaker, had installed Gatlin before Sunday’s semifinals and finals as a 5/6 favorite for victory, with Bolt at 11/10. Shortly before the finals themselves, the odds changed: Gatlin 4/9, Bolt 2/1.

Ato Boldon, himself a former champion sprinter who is now an accomplished broadcaster, had declared Saturday on his Facebook page, “Semi finals for tomorrow. Final will shock everyone (except those with two eyes, who use them),” elaborating for the New York Times, “Gatlin is so head and shoulders above anyone else in this field in terms of execution, fitness and readiness that I find it almost comical that it’s being billed as a big showdown. Gatlin is going to put on a clinic, and everyone who makes that 100 final is invited.”

Bolt ultimately put on the clinic — and yet in far too many quarters of the English-speaking press, particularly the British media, the race was depicted as a straightforward contest of “good” and “evil,” the caricature rendering Gatlin as “evil” and Bolt, who has never tested positive, as “good.”

This tweet, for example, from the track and field writer for the Daily Mail:

Nobody was turning off their sets. Just the opposite. For those who might prefer a more sober approach, here was the BBC:

“… The public wants sport to be entertainment and to provide simple lessons in morality. It wants great stories, and the greatest possible story has an alternative narrative to that proposed by Gatlin and Bolt.

“The public wants Gatlin to be the bad guy and Bolt to be the good guy. That's why hundreds of millions around the world will be watching Sunday's final in Beijing — to see the bad guy get beat.”

For one, Gatlin is not a bad guy. He is a good guy. For real — great with kids and with fans of the sport, with a mission to make track and field as interesting to Americans, in particular, as an NFL game. Gatlin cares deeply about track and field, about his country and about his family.

Moments after the race, Gatlin sought out his mother, Jeannette. Asked what he told her, he replied:

"I didn’t say anything to my mother. Win or lose, that was my plan, to go embrace her. For the simple fact that my mother and my father," Willie, a Vietnam vet, "have been through my ups and downs with me. For them, it has been a journey. It has been a journey for me. I’m so happy they can be at every championship I have been at. I love them. I love them."

For another, the 100 is a footrace, not a marker for world peace.

Larry Eder, editor of the website RunBlogRun, which covers road running and track and field, had written, “I have to admit, I get really tired of the good versus evil and the big bad doper stories. It takes less much more work to write about the the pile of horse manure piled on the sport in recent times, than it does to write about one, how to change it, and two, what is actually going on in Beijing.”

Also Sunday, 13 months after giving birth to a son, Reggie, Britain’s Jessica Ennis-Hill won gold in the heptathlon; Joe Kovacs won the men’s shot put with a fifth-round throw of 21.93 meters, 71 feet 11-1/2 inches, the first American to win at the worlds in six years and Team USA’s first gold here in Beijing; the rounds of the men’s 400 were super-crazy fast, with 18 guys running under 45 seconds, two under 44; and the American Tori Bowie going 10.88 in the first round of the women’s 100, the fastest first-round time ever in the history of the world championships.

As the BBC noted in even the same piece, the “very idea of Gatlin as some harbinger of death for the sport of athletics is darkly absurd and comical in itself, given that generations of drug cheats have been doing their best to kill the sport for half a century.”

Nonetheless, at the post-race news conference, a reporter asserted that "a few of the other athletes in the race" said it was "important" that Bolt win. What did Gatlin think about that?

He replied, "I'm thankful."

"Anything more? Can you be more specific?"

"Specifically, I'm thankful."

"Is that what you have to say? It's an important issue for me, at least."

"Very important? Then I'm thankful."

Next question, from a different reporter: "Rightly or wrongly, do you think the IAAF are grateful you didn't [win]?"

"I'm thankful."

Nehemiah had said just minutes before, referring to the anti-Gatlin venom infecting so many in the media, "It's unfair. I feel badly for him because I know him personally. As much as I say to him, 'Let your running be your refuge,' he’s human. It’s sad we are reading the lowest common denominator."

He added a moment later, "At some point we need to rise above that. Because he himself doesn’t deserve that."

For those intrigued by numerology, Bolt's 9.79 matched exactly the 9.79 that Ben Johnson, of mega-doping fame, ran in Seoul in 1988. Make of that what you will, if anything.

Back in the real world, the unrelenting emphasis from the Daily Mail and others:

Four of Saturday’s seven prelims were won by athletes with doping records: Gatlin, who in addition to his 2006 difficulties also tested positive in 2001 for trace amounts of amphetamine owing to the use of Adderall, his prescription medicine for ADD; the American Tyson Gay, a one-year suspension for steroid use; Femi Ogunode, the Nigerian-born runner who runs for Qatar, two years for a stimulant; and Jamaica’s Asafa Powell, six months for a stimulant.

Another American, Mike Rodgers, also qualified into Sunday’s semifinal; he got nine months off for a stimulant.

All but Ogunode would make it through to Sunday’s final.

In the first of Sunday night’s three semifinals, Bolt almost tripped coming out of the blocks — it looked like his bright yellow shoes with the green stripe on the side were maybe a stitch too long in front — and had to dig to win the heat, which he did in 9.96. DeGrasse, the Pan Am Games and NCAA champ, also crossed in 9.96.

Bromell finished third, in 9.99. Bingtan Su, fourth, became the first Chinese ever to go sub-10, also timed in 9.99.

"As an athlete, you can ask any athlete, any top athlete, if you start doubting yourself, you have already lost the race," Bolt said when asked if the semifinal stumble weighed on him going into the final, adding, "I never doubt myself."

All Gatlin did in the next semifinal was rip off the fastest worlds non-final time ever, 9.77. And he was taking it easy at the end, slowing with 10 meters to go.

Rodgers flashed across second, in a season-best 9.86.

Ogunode took third, in 10-flat.

In the third semi, it was Gay in 9.96, Powell in 9.97.

Thus, into the final, all four Americans: Gatlin, Gay, Rodgers, Bromell.

In the final, Gatlin drew Lane 5, Bolt 7, Gay between them in 6.

Mugging for the cameras before the start, Bolt smiled and made the kind of motion with his hands you might make on Halloween, as if to say, who’s scared?

Gatlin blew two kisses, then — as he had in the prelims and semis — made a show of strength with both fists.

Bolt, since his false start in the 100 at the 2011 Daegu worlds, has been a cautious starter. On Sunday, though, he was out of the blocks in 0.159 seconds; Gatlin, in 0.165.

Gatlin drew ahead, and stayed ahead, until about 80 meters. Then it got tight.

And then Gatlin gave the race away. As he said in a news conference, aiming for the line, he was "trying to get my momentum forward." He got too forward, and lost control.

It made for Gatlin’s first loss since Sept. 6, 2013.

Asked if he believed Gatlin pressed, knowing that Bolt was right there, Nehemiah said, "Extremely. Lost concentration."

He also said, meaning the race itself, "I still think it was epic for the fans."

Bolt, meanwhile, has to be given enormous credit for his performance come championship time — and his ability to keep on being the best in the world over a sustained period. He is now the 100 champion at the 2008 (and 2012) Olympics, and at the 2009, 2013 and 2015 worlds.

Bolt with his meme // Getty Images

He also just turned 29 — two days ago.

And still the king. After the race, camera crews urged him into his “To Di World” pose.

Asked about the difference between 2009, when he ran a world-record 9.58, and now, Bolt said, "I’m the same person. I’m just getting older. It’s about trying to get everything together throughout the season. It’s hard."

And it's going to keep getting harder.

Nehemiah, once more, referring to next year in Rio: "We could still have the ending we want. If [Gatlin] wins that, people will forget about Beijing."

Justin Gatlin, and a run for redemption

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When Justin Gatlin first got the news — this was nine years ago — that he had tested positive for the banned substance testosterone, he literally fell out of the truck he was driving.

“While we were on the phone,” his mother, Jeanette, would later testify, “all I could hear was him screaming and screaming on the other end, and how, no, no, no, no, I’m dead, I’m dead. And we were afraid that he was going to do something to himself. He was in North Carolina, and we were in Florida. You know, to — you can’t get there. You can’t keep him safe from doing whatever. He was just — he was — he was — he was screaming. He was screaming and yelling, and he was driving, and he was in his truck, and he fell out. He stopped, and he fell out, and he fell apart. He just kept on saying, ‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead. It’s over, it’s over, it’s — I’m dead, Mommy, I’m dead.’ ”

Justin Gatlin is assuredly not dead, and his track and field career is now the farthest thing from over. For the past two-plus years, Gatlin has been the best sprinter on Planet Earth, the fastest guy anywhere anytime. Many experts expect him not only to challenge but to defeat Usain Bolt in the 100 meters at the world championships, which begin this weekend at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing. And maybe the 200, too.

Justin Gatlin in June at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, after running 19.57 to win the 200 at the U.S. nationals // Getty Images

"That's what everyone is waiting to see," Maurice Greene, the Sydney 2000 100 gold medalist, said Friday.

Here in Beijing as a television commentator, Greene added, referring to Bolt, "How prepared is he? Because you know Justin is prepared."

That 2006 test was Gatlin’s second go-around with the doping authorities; he would end up being banned for four years. The first test came in 2001. Because the facts and circumstances of both tests have been not just under-reported but thoroughly misunderstood, Gatlin has become to many with an interest in track and field something like Public Enemy No. 1 — particularly when compared, as he often is, to the larger-than-life Bolt.

The British press in particular has been given to depicting the races here in Beijing as a clash of "good versus evil."

In March, the Telegraph, one of Britain’s leading dailies, called Bolt a “superhero.”  A few days ago, the same newspaper included Gatlin on a list of what it called “the most hated sportsmen in the world,” a “sport-by-sport breakdown of the most loathsome individuals.”

 At a news conference Thursday, Bolt was asked if he was the "savior" of track and field. He said, speaking generally, not referring to Gatlin, “People are saying I need to win for the sport. But there’s a lot of other athletes out there running clean, and who have run clean throughout their whole careers. I can’t do it by myself. It’s a responsibility of all the athletes to take it upon themselves to save the sport and go forwards without drug cheats."

Usain Bolt at Thursday's news conference // Getty Images

The curious thing is that Justin Gatlin is the farthest thing from loathsome. As Greene said, referring to both Bolt and Gatlin, "Take out everything that has to do with sports. They’re both good guys." David Oliver, the U.S. 110-meter hurdles standout, said about Gatlin, "I'm rooting for him and I hope he does well."

Gatlin comes from a strong family. His father, Willie, served with distinction for more than 20 years in the U.S. military, a Vietnam veteran, and the son wears the red, white and blue national uniform with pride. Justin Gatlin is great with kids and with track and field fans. When he got tagged in 2006, his first instinct was to cooperate with the federal government in its BALCO investigation, which he did extensively. Since coming back to the sport five years ago, he has not tested positive, and be assured that he is a marked man.

The question now is, if you allow for the very real possibility that Justin Gatlin is indeed running clean, can he run this week in Beijing for redemption?

All things are possible in sports, and particularly track and field, which for years has been bedeviled by doping. But what if -- what if -- Gatlin is, despite all the well-earned skepticism about the sport, running clean?

In his sworn testimony, Gatlin himself said, “I believe in my talent to the fullest. And I think God is trying to be, my way of showing everyone that I can do this, I can run great times without even trying to use performance-enhancing drugs.”

In an interview, he said, “I think that for so long I have shut down because of being beat upon by the media, [believing] if I say less it will go away. I’m wrong.

“At this point in time, I am trying to open up more, speak more and take it in. I am a cool guy, a nice guy. I am not trying to short-change anybody taking anything away from anyone. I welcome competition. If I get beat, I say, ‘That was a good beating.’ If I win, ‘I say that’s a good win.’ ''

The many critics of track’s doping rules say, often citing Gatlin, that two strikes should mean a lifetime doping ban. But the rules say, unequivocally, that Gatlin is allowed to run.

It's not difficult to understand why the concept of a lifetime ban might seem so appealing to so many. But theory is not real life. And it is the case that when applied to life as it is — how Justin Gatlin came to test twice — a lifetime ban would be cruelly unfair.

Those plain facts are publicly available, and sketched out in great detail, including sworn testimony in extensive transcripts from a 2007 arbitration sparked by Gatlin’s 2006 test. These documents inhabit a federal court file in Pensacola, Florida. They make it clear that:

— Gatlin’s first flunked test, in 2001, was for medication he had been taking for attention deficit disorder, a condition he had wrestled with since he was a young boy. Gatlin, at the time still a teen-ager, tried to follow the rules. Nonetheless, he came up positive.

— The second test, at the Kansas Relays in 2006, has long sparked controversy because of the assertion in Gatlin’s camp that a masseuse rubbed steroid-laced cream on Gatlin, sparking the doping positive. A reading of the record strongly suggests that story came from Gatlin’s former coach, Trevor Graham, whose credibility — amid his extensive involvement in the BALCO scandal — has to be viewed with extreme suspicion. A more likely, if unproven, explanation is that the positive test resulted from a shot or a pill described at length in the testimony.

“At the end of the day,” Gatlin said in an interview at his training base in Clermont, Florida, near Orlando, “the irony of the situation is I really do want the sport to be in a better place outside of everything that has gone on in my life.

“I look at the young guys and say, ‘I don’t want you to go through what I went through because you run fast, or run faster.’

“I want people to say he is making a difference in his sport — moving the sport along.”

Justin Gatlin has run fast for a very long time. In high school in Florida, he was a state champion sprinter. That earned him a scholarship to the University of Tennessee. There he was a multiple NCAA champion.

At the 2001 junior nationals, when he was 19, Gatlin tested positive for trace amounts of amphetamine.

The substance at issue was Adderall, a prescription medication. At age 9, in fourth grade, he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. His class had been assigned a test; Justin turned in a paper that contained a picture of a bird he had drawn instead -- the bird, on a window ledge, had captured his entire focus. A teacher suggested to his parents that Justin ought “to be evaluated.”

At UT, Gatlin was taking two summer school classes he needed to stay eligible: English 101 and Music History 350. In both classes, he had midterms the week of June 11, 2001, just before the junior nationals.

Gatlin took his Adderall to help him stay focused while studying for his midterms. He stopped taking it three days before running — why three days, exactly, instead of four or five or two or whatever, remains unclear. In the sample Gatlin gave on June 16, 2001, authorities detected trace amounts of amphetamine. A sample he gave the next day, June 17, contained even smaller amounts, consistent with Gatlin having stopped taking the Adderall on or before June 13.

The authorities and Gatlin would enter in a stipulated — meaning, mutually agreed — series of facts surrounding that test. These included:

“The course of action followed by most athletes with ADD is simply to discontinue their medication in advance of a competition. USADA,” the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, “advised athletes after consultation with their physicians to discontinue using the ADD medication prior to competition in order for the medication to clear their system.”

And:

“Mr. Gatlin neither cheated nor intended to cheat. He did not intend to enhance his performance nor, given his medical condition, did his medication in fact enhance his performance.”

The rule in doping matters is that an athlete is strictly liable for what is in his or her system.

The standard ban in those years for a first doping offense was two years.

An arbitration panel that reviewed the matter would observe:

“While Mr. Gatlin may have violated the IAAF anti-doping rules in that he did not first seek an exemption from the IAAF for his medication before he competed, he certainly is not a doper. This Panel would characterize Mr. Gatlin’s inadvertent violation of the IAAF’s rules based on uncontested facts as, at most, a ‘technical’ or ‘paperwork’ violation.”

Gatlin got two years. He then petitioned the IAAF for a reduction, citing “exceptional circumstances.” Granted. He served a provisional suspension of almost one year.

Gatlin left UT in 2002 and turned pro. He started training in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Graham’s Sprint Capitol group.

At the 2003 world indoor championships in Birmingham, England, Gatlin won the 60-meter dash.

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Gatlin won the 100, in 9.85 seconds. He took third in the 200, in 20.03. He also earned a silver as part of the U.S. 4x100 relay team.

At the 2005 world championships in Helsinki, Gatlin won both the 100 and 200.

When Gatlin first connected with Graham, Gatlin’s parents were acutely concerned that Graham not only train Gatlin but, more broadly, look after their son.

“And all that was said at that time was, are you sure nothing is going to happen to Justin?” his mother would testify, recalling their first conversations with Graham.

“Are you going to make sure that he doesn’t get involved in all this other stuff,” meaning doping, “that, you know, my husband was reading about on the Internet, and I was reading about on the Internet.

“And he,” meaning Graham, “said, ‘Absolutely. That has nothing to do with us, my camp, and the way I train my athletes.”

Gatlin training under current coach Dennis Mitchell in Clermont, Florida

On April Fools’ Day 2004, a prank circulated on the web that Gatlin had tested positive.

“And actually, I was at the dentist’s office,” Jeanette Gatlin testified. “Justin was home. He had not really just located — I mean, he was home for visiting — and, anyway, my husband ran across this article on the Internet saying that Justin Gatlin had tested positive. And he called me at the dentist’s office, I went running home and he — should I say it all?”

“Go ahead,” the lawyer questioning her said.

“He was packing his gun.”

“And where was he headed?”

“He was headed to kill Trevor Graham.”

“And why was [that]?’

“Because it said Justin had tested positive, and Trevor had promised that there would be nothing like that going on in his camp. He was going to take care of Justin. And he knew, he knew that [Justin] already had that other offense hanging over him.”

“I trust you stopped him?”

“We stopped him, because … I’m saying — I’m saying, how can you go kill this man? I mean, you are going to — anyway, my husband is crying. Tears are coming out of his eyes. He’s crying. He’s ready to kill Trevor. And then Justin goes on the Internet, and he sits there, and he looks at it, and he says, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, read the bottom of it. Read the bottom of it. And the bottom of it said, April Fool’s.”

“Do you know who posted that?”

“I have no idea but we were very angry about it. And my husband was saying that — you know, they can’t be playing jokes like this with people’s lives. and then all of a sudden, somebody else may read it and believe it without going through it, like he didn’t go through it. And we never did find out who posted it …”

Track and field has a distinct rhythm to the outdoor season. Athletes build toward summer, which three years out of four brings either a world championships or Summer Games.

The Kansas Relays is an early-season fixture on the circuit, a three-day meet held every almost year (since 1923) in April.

On April 22, 2006, Gatlin ran in the 4x100 relay at those Kansas Relays with his Sprint Capitol teammates. They won, in 38.16.

On July 29, Gatlin announced to the press that he had tested positive for testosterone at the Kansas Relays.

Two mysteries relating to the 2006 test have long endured.

The first is what authorities thought they would find — that is, why bother to test — at such an early-season affair.

The second is why it took so long — three months, April to July — for the test from those Kansas Relays to become what’s called, in the vernacular, an “adverse analytical finding,” or a doping positive.

The court files explain.

From May 2004 through October 2006, Paul Scott supervised the reporting of athlete urine samples at the WADA-accredited UCLA laboratory. In that capacity, he supervised the reporting of Gatlin’s Kansas Relays sample. He would provide an April 7, 2008, sworn affidavit relating what happened:

Though the sample was provided April 22, 2006, it wasn’t until June 15 that the lab itself reported an adverse analytical finding. This nearly two-month delay was, as Scott would say, “not common practice.”

The reason for the delay?

Gatlin’s sample initially produced a negative result — meaning he apparently was clear — under what’s called the T/E ratio test, the standard test used both in- and out-of-competition to screen for testosterone. Indeed, Scott said, Gatlin’s sample was originally reported to USADA as a negative.

About one month later, USADA got in touch and requested that the lab perform what’s called a “longitudinal analysis” because, Scott said, because “they had reason to believe that the athlete was using testosterone,” adding, “I now know this athlete to be Justin.”

USADA executive Travis Tygart did not, Scott said, inform the lab of the “nature of the ‘tip’ nor the basis for his belief.”

The lab did as asked, and concluded that Gatlin is what’s called a “low-mode individual,” who — to make it simple — lacks a particular enzyme, with the effect that the T/E ratio is typically very low and does not much change if that individual is administered “exogenous testosterone,” from a source outside his body.

The lab told USADA Gatlin was low-mode. “I am not aware of whether we recommended or USADA requested that a Carbon Isotope Ratio test be performed,” Scott said, referring to a test that is both far more sensitive and way more expensive, in the range of several hundred dollars.

In June 2006, the lab performed the CIR test. Bingo. A positive test.

Why did USADA ask for the further analysis that led to the positive?

In another set of stipulated facts, the answer:

At that same 2003 world indoors at which Gatlin won the men’s 60, Michelle Collins won the women’s 200. Her 22.18 would have been an American record but it was never ratified. Instead, after being linked to the BALCO matter, she admitted using illicit substances. Ultimately, she would get a lengthy suspension.

In May 2004, Collins told USADA that Trevor Graham, her former coach, “told her to appear at track events with no drug testing and to use fast-acting drugs to avoid detection.”

She last trained with Graham in 2001, before Gatlin met up with Graham, the legal document stresses.

USADA “considered this information provided by Michelle Collins and decided to test at the 2006 Kansas Relays, an event at which it had not previously tested,” the document says.

Travis Tygart of USADA // Getty Images

In late 2005, USADA notified USA Track & Field and Kansas Relays organizers it would be testing that next April at the meet.

Gatlin was picked for testing after his relay team won first place; he had run the anchor leg. “This selection” for testing “was in accordance with USADA’s routine selection criteria for track and field relay events,” the document says.

When he was on the road, Gatlin had a reputation as the room service king.

He testified, “I have this paranoia about people messing with my food, or especially, from the first incident where I don’t like to let people do anything orally to my food, and my water, and I don’t like people touching my stuff or around me.”

On June 15, 2006, the room service king, ever careful, learned in a three-way call — with his agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, and his parents — that he had tested positive at the Kansas Relays.

Gatlin testified:

“It was a nightmare that I live again, from my first situation, and I found, I prided myself, I would never put myself in that situation again, and it happened to me again, and I remember the only thing that I kept saying over and over was that my life was over. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, because, running is, running is what I love. I love to run. And I never would do anything like that, because I know I have the support of my family and my friends.”

Jeanette Gatlin, in testimony, asked if Justin had ever said “that he knowingly took a substance”:

“Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. He kept on saying, ‘I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know how this happened. I’m careful. I watch everything. I know one thing: I’m dead.’ That’s all my child kept saying, was that he was dead. He was dead.”

Asked what he did in the weeks between when he found out he had tested positive, and July 29, when word went out to the media, Gatlin responded, “Other than cry?”

Jeanette Gatlin was asked if the experience had taken a toll on her son:

“Most definitely. Most definitely.

“When Justin came home,” to Florida from the Sprint Capitol base in Raleigh, “before we went back and relocated him, Justin would be sleeping, you could hear him at night. You could hear him, he just uh-huh, ugh-huh, ugh-huh, you go in there and he is just jumping. He is just jumping. He is cold and sweaty, and he’s crying, and he’s breaking down, when you talk to him, in the daytime, baby, think about it, think about what happened, he just breaks down, he starts crying and he’s shaking and falling apart. He’s not sleeping at night. He’s restless, I’m going through getting up all time of night, going in there and [checking] on him.”

She also testified, “Not only has my child, Justin Gatlin, suffered and [is] still suffering, his name, his reputation. We have all suffered. We have all suffered. I have — I’m bald, not by choice. This is the haircut that anybody that knows me has never seen on me before. I have long hair. My hair was coming out in clumps. I had to go and have my hair cut off through the stress of this. I have never suffered high blood pressure before until this.

“Justin — Justin walks tall, and he’s strong, and he’s strong and he’s positive. But he — I see the hurt in him. I see how he’s just, well, can — Momma, can I buy a pair of jeans? Can I buy a pair of jeans? Do we have money? Can I buy a pair of jeans?”

Gatlin, left, lifting weights with Isiah Young

Nehemiah testified that the second test cost Gatlin “5, 6 million dollars.” Gatlin, Nehemiah said, had  grossed $1.549 million in 2005; projections in 2006 alone, the agent said, were for “anywhere from $2.5 to $3 million” in 2006 alone. Owing to the positive test, Nehemiah said, Gatlin’s 2006 gross: $280,235.

After winning 2004 Olympic gold, Nehemiah said, there had been a meeting with Gatlin, his parents and officials from both Nike and USATF, a “coming-to-Jesus talk.” He said the tenor of the conversation went like this: “OK. You are no longer Justin Gatlin. You are the United States of America. And everywhere you go, you go this great site, and everybody likes you so, you know, there’s a lot that’s being put on your shoulders.”

“Did he embrace that burden?” Nehemiah was asked.

“He embraced it, yes, wholeheartedly.”

Jeanette Gatlin continued: “You know, he’s suffering,” referring to her son. “He doesn’t know where he’s going to get another paycheck, what’s going to happen and how he’s going to continue to live.

“This,” she said, “is his life.”

Shortly after news of the positive test broke, the Escambia County, Florida, Sheriff’s Department asked if Justin could come speak to their graduating cadets. You’re aware, Jeanette Gatlin said, of the case? Yes, came the answer, she said, relating that this nonetheless was the response: “We want Justin to come. We believe in him. We have faith in him.”

He ended up speaking to that cadet class; too, to 4,000 students, high school and college, about the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program, with his mother saying “it was the biggest turnout they ever had”; to church groups — “not our church,” Jeanette Gatlin stressed — where “he spoke to them, and he read from the Bible, and he told them to obey the parents, obey the laws, stay away from drugs, keep their body clean. Keep their minds straight, keep them focused.”

Justin Gatlin spoke as well with Jeff Novitzky, the-then federal agent running the BALCO inquiry. On August 16, 2006, Gatlin met with Novitzky for five and a half hours in New York, voluntarily traveling to the meeting from Florida. At the end of that interview, Novitzky asked Gatlin to make undercover phone calls to Graham, as a means both to judge Gatlin’s credibility and to potentially gather evidence against Graham.

Gatlin agreed.

The former federal agent Jeff Novitzky // Getty Images

In all, Gatlin would make roughly a dozen calls to Graham and Randall Evans, an assistant coach. Throughout, the authorities viewed Gatlin as a cooperating witness.

Novitzky would testify as well.

This exchange, with Tygart:

“Well, did you ask him if he used any prohibited substances?

“Yes.”

“And what was his response to that?"

“His answer was no, never knowingly."

Novitzky also offered this assessment, referring to Gatlin, “Again to the best of my ability, and as I have testified before, throughout this case, I have not obtained any evidence, despite these hiccups and despite these concerns, looking back now historically, I have not obtained any evidence of his knowing receipt and use of banned substances.”

Thus the core question: what happened that prompted the 2006 positive test?

The dog-ate-the-homework theory that got advanced is that masseuse Chris Whetstine rubbed a cream containing steroids on Gatlin.

Where did this story come from?

Gatlin, in testimony, referring to Graham: “He said that he went and looked at the Internet to find out what the cream was that he thought Chris Whetstine used, and he came across DHEA,” banned as  a testosterone precursor.

A moment later, in further testimony: “He said that while Chris was applying the cream on me in Kansas that he saw a — I think he said a pink tube, a white tube and a pink squiggle on it,” purportedly made by Sarati Laboratories, “and he went back and referenced that, and he came up with DHEA.”

Asked if Graham’s “speculation” was “accurate or not,” Gatlin testified:

“It’s a very strong speculation, and I wouldn’t say it was a bull’s eye, a bull’s-eye, but I think that — it’s more of an oval-shaped peg than a square peg fitting in a circle.”

Why, he was asked, put so much weight on what Graham would assert?

“Well, to do research on it, especially doing research with my lawyer at that point in time … we researched DHEA, and some of the stuff that we learned about it, and kind of went along with the story of what happened.”

Gatlin was asked, did you see the tube Whetstine had? No.

Did you ask to see it? No.

So, “you didn’t hear about the tube with the squiggly S on it until after you had been reported positive, correct?” Yes.

“… And the only person that you heard that from was Trevor Graham, correct?” Yes.

Graham did not testify in this hearing. Nor, for that matter, did Evans.

But Whetstine did.

Referring to Graham, Whetstine said, “Well, golly, I thought I was … I mean, in 2006, I would have to say it was probably the best year in our relationship that we ever had. We would go on long walks together, talked about politics, religion, he showed an immense amount of concern for Justin Gatlin in trying to keep him on focused [sic] and on track, so that we could attain our goal."

Answering questions from Tygart:

“Do you have any knowledge of how Justin Gatlin tested positive?"

“None, sir."

“Did you apply any prohibited substances to Mr. Gatlin?"

“No, sir."

“Did you apply testosterone cream to Mr. Gatlin?"

“No, sir."

More:

“When you heard of Justin Gatlin’s positive tests, what came to your mind as the possibility of how this occurred?"

“I had no idea. I had no idea how it could have occurred."

“Did you do any introspection as to whether anything you did might have caused this?"

“Well, I knew that nothing that I did would have inadvertently caused it."

Later, in an exchange with one of the arbitrators supervising the case:

“Have you heard of Sarati Laboratories?"

“No, sir."

“Have you heard of a cream, Deep Hydrating Essential Aloe Cream?"

“Only after this investigation."

“Did you ever have any tubes that were white tubes with pink squiggles or stylized letter S's on them?"

“No. I can provide you a little insight into — I’m going to step out on a limb here, and call it Mr. Graham’s alibi. And let you know — I want to be careful, because I don’t want to be inflammatory.

“I’m a pretty big supporter of Justin Gatlin, and I don’t want to believe that Justin did anything wrong, OK?

“But in the light of the truth and fairness, where they’re concocting this story from is that my sponsor Biotone, OK? There’s a — I am given a product to distribute from Biotone, BioFreeze, to athletes and therapists; not only therapists that are under my direction, but other therapists, who would be, you know, ostensibly of some notoriety, if they were to be making a plane trip from one place to another.

“And one of the bottles that Biotone has — I think it’s called the Dual Purpose Massage Cream, a product that I don’t use. I use an oil, which I may have already described in my testimony. And this Biotone Dual Purpose Massage Cream has a pink band on it. 

“And so, somehow, they have leapt from the Prefontaine Classic," an annual track meet in Eugene, Oregon, "which is probably, I think, June 7th — some time in early June when that product first showed up for distribution to my staff, courtesy of Biotone, and something that they claim that happened months prior.

“It’s a product I don’t even use. It’s solely for distribution to my staff."

“… But you don’t know that the Dual Purpose Massage Cream that you have described contains any prohibited substance?"

“If that were the case, every athlete at the Prefontaine Classic that year would have tested positive."

“Why is that so? Because you said you don’t use it."

“Because I distribute it to 17 other therapists. I give out a goodie bag that has all Biotone and Biofreeze products, PowerBar and literature from StrongLite …"

Whetstine also testified that in May 2004, he went with Evans to a pharmacy in Monterrey, Mexico, where he — Whetstine — bought Voltaren cream, an Advil-like anti-inflammatory that is not uncommon in American track and field circles, even though it’s not typically available in the United States.

“And I would like to note at that time,” Whetstine testified, “I watched the witness Randall Evans buy pure testosterone.”

At a different point in the hearing, Whetstine was asked by another of the arbitrators to elaborate.

“You made a reference to Randall Evans purchasing testosterone in Mexico?"

“Yes."

“Do you know what he was using that testosterone for?"

“Well, he told me it was for sexual performance. I don’t care what he was using it for. I was furious. He — I was livid."

“This was in 1998?"

“No, this was in 2004, yeah, because he was in Mexico in 2003 and we went back in 2004. And as he was purchasing two packages that had 8 vials apiece. I mean, he was saying it was for topical application for sexual enhancement. And these were bottles — you know, like they have the — like a skinny neck, like a tight neck with a — like an aluminum cap? And that to me means that — that’s like what you see in the hospital. I mean, that’s something that you can inject in somebody.

“And I was furious. And as he was paying for it, I left. I wanted nothing to do with that and told him so. Made sure that I was not in the airport with him, that we left on — you know, did not arrive at the same time for our departures, called my girlfriend — actually, on Justin Gatlin’s phone, called my girlfriend, expressed that I was furious.

“And she inquired about it, and you know, I get — it does have some levity to it. She said, well, if that’s what he’s saying, honey, you don’t need any of that stuff. I mean, she was joking with me."

“So why were you furious?"

“I was extremely furious at why — you know, I was furious."

“Why were you furious?"

“He’s buying testosterone, sir. That’s a prohibited substance. I don’t want any exposure or knowledge of anything."

“So I mean, were you — did you consider that he was buying it for other athletes?"

“I didn’t care what he was doing. I didn’t want him doing it in front of me."

“When you say it’s a prohibited substance, I’m a little bit — it was legal for him to buy that in Mexico, correct?"

“I don’t know. You know, the story is you can get whatever you want in Mexico, and his wife is Spanish. He actually says his wife works for the FBI, was his claim, and she was an FBI agent and was bilingual, and so, I guess he had some lingo, but — what was the question?"

“Well, I guess I’m just trying to figure out — I’m trying to figure out why were you furious? It seems to me if he was buying it for himself, it would be OK. If he was in Mexico, obviously, he shouldn’t be transporting it across the border.”

“But if he was buying it for other people, it seems to me — especially for athletes — that would be a valid reason for being furious."

“Sir? My integrity, hard work and my word are all that I have to go on in this business. I do not want to be exposed to, have knowledge of any illegal activity, OK? And I don’t care what he’s buying it for. I don’t care what he’s buying it for. OK?"

Gatlin had long had problems with tweaky hamstrings. That was the case in the spring of 2006. HIs right hamstring was not responding.

Red blood cells take oxygen to the muscles. When the body can’t make enough red blood cells, one response is to take vitamin B12.

Taking the vitamin B12 orally was not doing the job, Gatlin testified. So he asked a doctor what to do; the doctor recommended a B12 injection directly into the hamstring itself.

It is also the case — well-known in the appropriate circles — that administering testosterone directly would help in recovery.

Who, Gatlin was asked on the record, did he talk with about the prospect of getting a B12 shot?

Graham, Evans and, as well, another sprinter who at one time was in the Sprint Capitol camp.

On April 6 or 7, Gatlin testified, he got a shot of what he believed to be B12.

At his house. From Evans. With Graham in attendance.

Whose idea was it, Gatlin was asked, to get a B12 shot? To ask the doctor about such a shot?

Graham, Gatlin testified.

“Did you — was it normal for you to get any sort of a shot by Randall Evans?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Had you ever gotten a shot from Randall Evans?”

“No.”

“Were you concerned about getting a shot from Randall Evans?”

No, because the doctor had “explained to me,” Gatlin said, “that Randall Evans was taking classes to become more medically inclined under his wing …”

“Before Mr. Evans injected you in your hamstring,” Gatlin was also asked, “did you ask him whether he had ever injected performance-enhancing substances into any athletes?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t believe he did. It was a B12 — sitting right here, it’s a B12 shot. That’s why I was concerned about my leg. I was concerned if he was juicing up some of the athletes that I didn’t know.”

At another point in the testimony:

“… You are a gold medalist, double world champion, and you allow this person, who is learning to give injections, to inject you in your hamstring while you are injured?”

“He wasn’t a person who was learning. He was my assistant coach.”

At the same time, Gatlin also sought to depict himself as not completely trusting of Evans. Before submitting to the injection, Gatlin said, he looked at the package: “It was a white box, and it said B12, and it said ‘Vitamins’ right across the front of it. It was an unopened package. It was sealed, and so was — the needle was also sealed,” just “a regular needle.”

A B12 injection comes as a clear red liquid solution. The red is vivid.

Crucially, Gatlin was never asked whether that B12 shot was red — neither by his own lawyer or on cross-examination.

Moreover, B12 injections are typically administered via the buttocks or shoulder, areas less susceptible to pain.

The day after the B12 shot, Gatlin did testify, he took a Voltaren pill — supplied, he said, by Evans.

The pill and shot came about a week before the Mt. SAC meet in California. There, Gatlin ran a relay leg; his team took second.

A week later: the Kansas Relays.

After Mt. SAC, Gatlin testified, he felt like he was back to 100 percent.

Again, Evans did not testify. Nor did the doctor.

Novitzky, meanwhile, was on the stand for this from USADA’s Tygart: “OK. Agent Novitzky, have you — are you aware that Randall Evans has denied giving an injection of B12?”

Objections came from both Gatlin’s lawyer and from government attorneys, and the question never did get answered.

Novitzky did testify that during that five hour-plus interview, Gatlin “categorized the pill .. as a ‘Voltaren bean.’ When myself and my partner heard the word ‘bean’ used — based on our investigation to that period of time, we had heard testosterone and Decadron,” a corticosteroid, “being referred to as a ‘bean,’ so it kind of spurred our interest when we heard that.”

During that interview, Gatlin was asked to describe the pill.

Novitzky testified, “He described it as green with a V on it.”

He added, “This wasn’t an instance where we just left it. We followed up and said, ‘Are you sure that’s what it looked like?’

“He said, ‘Yeah, he was sure it was green with a V on it.’

“We came to find out later, much later, months, maybe a year later, that he told someone else that the pill was brown, and brown is the color of these testosterone and Decadron pills, so we had some concern about that.

“We actually had Mr. Gatlin, his mother and [Gatlin’s lawyer] on a phone call, and brought that to their attention. They did come up with an explanation about his confusion regarding the coloring, and that he had been taking an Excedrin, which was a green, but these Voltaren pills that he had been taking all along were brown. You know a little bit unclear, where that leaves him, you know, in the credibility issue in that department.”

Another matter of credibility, Novitzky said, related to Angel “Memo” Heredia, long believed in track circles to be a chemist of considerable repute — who, as Nehemiah related it in testimony, “was not a Trevor Graham fan.”

Nehemiah, saying he was seeking answers to how Gatlin could have tested positive, commissioned Heredia to write a report.

Ultimately, Nehemiah said, the report “wasn’t comprehensive at all,” describing it as a “waste of our time.”

The report, after much negotiating, cost $10,000. But because of an accounting glitch, Heredia got paid $10,600.

“The Memo memo,” as it came to be called, ultimately made its way to Novitzky. From the agent’s point of view, the concern was simple: the government had no idea initially that Gatlin’s entourage had retained Heredia.

“This was all unbeknownst to us,” Novitzky said. “He didn’t — we found out about this second-hand, not from them. And that was a big issue toward us, in terms of, you know, cooperation and credibility, because typically, when we’re dealing with cooperators and looking at these issues, you know, one of the issues with a cooperator is full disclosure of everything.

“And while we did get some explanation that they weren’t sure that we needed to know this, and they thought we already knew some of this, the bottom line, it was not the case that they told us this was going on when it was going on. So that was another issue that came into play.”

It might be reasonable to assume that Gatlin would — in his own case — get some benefit from cooperating with Novitzky and the feds. In fact, he got none.

The majority of the three-member arbitration panel that heard the case noted it “finds much merit in Mr. Gatlin’s position and the facts of his cooperation, which were substantiated by the pertinent government witness, supports the extensive, voluntary and unique nature of Mr. Gatlin’s assistance.”

Even so, the rule at instance was super-precise: “substantial assistance” had to result directly in an anti-doping agency “discovering or establishing” doping by another person.

Yes, Gatlin cooperated, USADA acknowledged; yes, he took considerable risk; but, no, the dozen or so phone calls didn’t lead directly to any such violation.

As far as the Whetstine theory, the panel majority said, “the fact is that there is no substantiation of Mr. Gatlin’s naked claim.” It added, “There was no evidence that any of the creams used by the physical therapist actually tested positive.”

It said, “More importantly, the evidence submitted by Mr. Gatlin did not eliminate the possibility of intentional use or the possibility that he was the unwitting victim of doping by members of his coaching staff.”

Further, “Simply stated, this Panel does not know with any degree of confidence how the testosterone entered Mr. Gatlin’s system; transdermally or by pill or injection.”

That being the case, it said, “USADA makes a strong argument. If Mr. Gatlin cannot prove how the testosterone entered his system, and he did not, he cannot prove two significant facts. First, that it was the physical therapist that placed the testosterone in his system transdermally; and second, that he did not intentionally take testosterone.”

“Finally,” it said, “while Mr. Gatlin seems like a complete gentleman, and was genuinely and deeply upset during his testimony, the Panel cannot eliminate the possibility that Mr. Gatlin intentionally took testosterone, or accepted it from a coach, even though he testified to the contrary.”

It gave him four years off.

A 2008 review by another three-member panel, this one from the Swiss-based Court of Appeal for Sport, left it at that: four years.

Those four years, Gatlin said in an interview, were miserable. He moved to Atlanta and, to make money, taught sprinting to 8-year-olds.

“One thing I learned on my journey and it’s really true, kids are the least judgmental. Kids looked at me and never brought up any incident, never questioned anything, and they said, ‘Mr. Gatlin, I am just trying to get fast like you. Teach me.' ”

There was that. But he said, “I lost every endorsement. I lost everything.”

He also said, “I was so depressed, Me, my mother and my father, we are a core. We became stronger when i went through my ordeal. Going through the ordeal broke us down. My mother lost hair. For a woman, that’s a big thing. She prayed every day to the point where she was like, what is prayer doing? Nothing is being answered! She doubted her faith.

“I would honestly say my dad was more depressed than anybody. His son carries his name and gave him the most pride, and to go through what I went through made him so depressed. He didn’t talk a lot.”

As for Justin Gatlin himself, during those four years, he said, “I think that’s where track Justin met real Justin.

“It’s not a cliché to speak in the third-person sometime. I have to tell you how I experienced it. I didn’t see any worth my life. I wasn’t running. I wasn’t being acknowledged. I was looked upon as the bad guy. I was ready to enlist in the Army. I was ready to become a police officer. This is real: if I die, if I took a bullet, at least I took it for something I believe in — America.

“I have never been a person to have suicidal thoughts. But I said, ‘What is the worth of my life? Who am I?’ That’s when I had to say: ‘There is more to Justin than just running.’ “

It was with that attitude that Gatlin came back to the sport in 2010.

He worked himself back to a bronze at the 2012 London Games in the 100, behind Bolt.

The turning point came the next year, at the 2013 worlds in Moscow. The 100 went down in a pouring rainstorm. Bolt won, again, in 9.77, crossing the finish at the precise moment lightning flashed across the sky — an incredible, indeed indelible, picture.

That frame also shows Gatlin. He is behind Bolt, and to the Jamaican’s left. Gatlin would finish second, eight-hundredths back, 9.85.

Usain Bolt winning the 2013 100 meters in Moscow as lightning flashes, Gatlin eight-hundredths of a second back // Getty Images

Sprint coach (and former champion) Dennis Mitchell

Gatlin said, “I don’t want to step out of my boundaries and my respect for other opponents [but] when I look at that picture, that’s when I said to myself, ‘I think I can beat this guy. I can challenge this guy outright.’ “ 

To do so, however, he had to submit — to his coach, Dennis Mitchell. Gatlin said he had to accept Mitchell’s word as gospel, to let technique do the work for him in his races.

Until that lightning flash in 2013, Gatlin said, he had — whether consciously or not — been trying to do it his way. From that moment on, he said, it has been Mitchell’s way.

Mitchell typically draws a torrent of criticism from those who know he, too, tested positive during his days as a champion sprinter. There’s a back story there, though. Mitchell tested positive for what he relates as inadvertent use of DHEA. But who voluntarily testified for the government in its investigation of Graham? Among others, Mitchell.

Mitchell said, "I testified under oath in front of the feds that Trevor Graham coerced me into taking growth hormone."

He also said, “When you are dealing with the federal government the first thing you don’t do is lie. Because they will get you.”

“I was a witness for the good guys,” he added. “I wasn’t prosecuted. I wasn’t threatened. I wasn’t put on trial for lying. I was a 20-minute witness for the federal government, against Trevor Graham, to tell everything about my life and his life that would incriminate him. That’s what I did. And I took a hit for the good guys.

“And I knew that when I did that, either the sport was going to herald me as a good guy or they were going to kick me out as a villain. I rolled the dice. I said,’Dennis, everything you have been through in the sport, all the great achievements you have had in the sport, the sport will not turn its back on you.’ "

Doing what Mitchell says, Gatlin has not lost since the end of 2013. This year, he has run 9.74 in the 100, 19.57 in the 200.

The American records: 9.69 (Tyson Gay, Shanghai, 2009), 19.32 (Michael Johnson, Atlanta Olympics, 1996).

Under Mitchell's direction, Gatlin has lost roughly 30 pounds; the science of sprinting increasingly has come to recognize that leg strength -- not being top-heavy -- is what counts. He also has worked in the weight room to re-make his slimmer self and at improving his start.

"I wear medium shirts now," Gatlin said of his weight loss. "A large would be hanging off."

"Any person who has watched this kid, who knows track and field, can see the technique changes," Mitchell said, adding a moment later, "2014 is the year he woke up smart. He put his mind to it and went for it."

“When I step on the track, my percentage of worrying about opponents in the race has dropped significantly,” Gatlin said. “All I worry about is executing my technique, executing my race strategy and competing against time.”

He also said, “I feel there’s a difference between being in the zone and being dialed in. I have learned that the last two years. The zone is good; a lot of athletes are in the zone. But when you are in the zone there still can come a lot of variables; you can still worry about certain opponents, about what can go wrong. When you are dialed in, you worry about one thing,” execution of race strategy, “and that one thing will handle everything else.”

As an example, he said, “If you look back at all the races I have had just this year, if you look back with a careful eye, you will see difference. From the 19.68 I ran,” a 200 last July 18 at a Diamond League meet in Monaco, “to the 19.57,” this June 28 at the U.S. nationals, "the end of my race and my last 100 meters was way more relaxed, way more turnover.

‘I wasn’t fighting my technique. I just let my technique turn over. In my 19.68 race, I was more worried about running the curve.”

In his home bathroom, Gatlin said, he has hung what he calls a “vision board,” posts of what he wants to achieve. On the board, he said, are the times 19.30 and 9.68.

“At one point in time, my vision board was names. I have changed that. Now it’s numbers. Now it opens up a different door.”

Anything is possible in track and field, which for years and years has been marred by doping, and at the highest levels. As difficult as it may be for some skeptics, indeed cynics, the matter is straightforward: to believe that Justin Gatlin is doping is to believe he does not want to go through that door.

To assume that Gatlin is cheating is to believe he would risk his new Nike deal. Mitchell, too, has a new deal, and he and his wife have a baby. The mortgage gets tough to pay when there's no income.

Beyond all that, to believe that Gatlin is doping is to say he wants to stumble back to the wilderness — lost, angry, the sort of son who would disrespect his parents, who would make his mother’s hair fall out again, who would risk the certainty of a third strike and a lifetime away from the very thing that gives him so much joy, indeed meaning, in life.

Which seems more logical? Which more reasonable?

“I found me,” Gatlin said of his four years away.

He said, “I had to step back and realize, you know, just because everyone doesn’t agree with what I am doing doesn’t mean they are against me.

“Just because someone doesn’t step up doesn’t mean they aren’t for me.”

Can Justin Gatlin be a hero?

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EUGENE, Oregon — It was 40 years ago Saturday — May 30, 1975 — that Steve Prefontaine crashed his gold 1973 MGB convertible on a curve here on Skyline Boulevard and died. He is by now legend, myth, icon and the man that America wants its track heroes to be. By all rights, amid this year’s running of the Prefontaine Classic, the guy who should be America’s track and field hero is Justin Gatlin. He won the 200 meters here Saturday in 19.68, eighth-fastest in history, a meet record. Gatlin’s challenge is not what he does between the lines. It’s what he says when he’s not performing. And how he handles himself, and his doping-related past.

This is all a reminder that this hero business is hard. And yet not so. A little humility and accountability, and knowing what to say at the right time, can go a long way.

Americans can be so forgiving. There is a deep well of forgiveness just waiting for Justin Gatlin if he can find it in himself to get to that place of honest redemption. When he was introduced here before the start of the 200, there were cheers, not boos. After the race, he spent a half-hour signing autographs and had to be dragged away to talk to reporters on deadline.

Is Justin Gatlin a hero? Can he be? What would it take to really, truly get him there?

Justin Gatlin running away with Saturday's 200 at Hayward Field // photo courtesy USATF

What went down here in Eugene over the weekend is also a reminder of track and field’s niche role in the American scene, and how even an amazing meet like this year’s Pre Classic — which seemingly featured virtually every great track star in the world save Jamaica's Usain Bolt and Kenya's David Rudisha — is but a starting block.

Track and field has to be — and this is the aim of the organizers of the 2021 world championships in Eugene — a sport that goes through the winter and spring and into the summer and captures the public imagination, well beyond Hayward Field, beyond Eugene, beyond Portland, beyond Oregon.

It needs stories and stars.

On Saturday, a sell-out crowd of 13,278 at Hayward Field saw the likes of France’s Renaud Lavillenie, who tried three times Saturday to break the world record in the pole vault — 20 feet, 2 1/2 inches — on an injured shoulder, only to come up just short;  American Allyson Felix, who ran a sophisticated 50.05 to win the women’s 400; Granada’s Kirani James, who ran a breathtaking 43.95 to win the men’s 400; and, of course, the incomparable Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica, the multiple Olympic champion in the sprints, who won the women’s 100 in 10.81.

The field heads into the first turn in Saturday's  Bowerman Mile

It needs the likes of Justin Gatlin.

Gatlin ought to be huge. Not just in track and field but as a breakout star. Like Prefontaine.

Last year, Gatlin did not lose a race. He is the 2004 100-meter champion. He is now back, at age 33, and running ridiculously fast.

At a Diamond League meet a few weeks ago, he ran a 9.74 in the 100 — his best-ever, and the fourth-fastest time of all time. Only Bolt (9.58 in 2009), American Tyson Gay (9.69, 2009), Jamaica's Yohan Blake (9.69, 2012) and another Jamaican, Asafa Powell (9.72, 2008), have run faster.

At the World Relays in the Bahamas earlier this month, Gatlin’s second leg in the 4x100 was so quick that even Bolt, running anchor, had no chance to catch Ryan Bailey, who took it home for the Americans.

You want to know why Nike recently gave Gatlin a new contract?

He wins.

Gatlin is a serious, legitimate, for-real threat to take out Bolt this August at the world championships in August and next year at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Bolt — just for the record — runs for Puma.

All this has come for Gatlin, again, at age 33. He has two doping run-ins in his history. The first, in 2001, a positive test for amphetamines, would have led to a two-year ban; Gatlin proved, though, that since childhood he had been taking meds for attention deficit disorder. Then he served a four-year ban, from 2006 to 2010 for a failed test for testosterone — which Gatlin has claimed was due to a massage therapist, Chris Whetstine, who rubbed the cream onto his legs without his knowledge.

This has always struck some as the kind of story that would make for an excellent subject for cross-examination under oath in federal court.

Meanwhile, as the South African scientist Ross Tucker pointed out in an excellent column, Gatlin has to confront “three strikes” in a “world of unprecedented skepticism — he is a former doper, dominating a historically doped event, while running faster than his previously doped self.”

At the same time, it’s also the case that the doping rules are what they are. Gatlin gets to run again.

Also, and particularly in the United States, everyone gets a second chance.

Since the days of the Pilgrims, that is the narrative of our nation. All you history majors: you can look it up. Everyone gets a second chance.

By now, the rules, as even Gatlin himself understands, because he articulated them after Saturday’s race, are quite simple and elegant. You apologize in public, owning what you did, and we all move on.

Gay, for instance, recently served a one-year ban. At the Relays, he apologized. He won Saturday’s 100 in 9.88. (Gatlin did not run the 100 here.)

“You know," Gatlin said, referring to Gay, "I mean, what more can you do? He came out and he publicly apologized for his incident. You know, he asked for forgiveness [from] his fans and his teammates, which is us. You know, what more can you do? He gave back his [2012 Olympic] medal. He gave back money. He’s back in the sport, working hard, just to feed his family, like anybody else in the sport.

“So, you know, I can’t do nothing but forgive him … because I have to focus on my race and my aspects and try to get on the podium myself.”

All of which makes the sustained back-and-forth that erupted at Friday’s pre-race news conference all the more difficult to comprehend.

First it was Gatlin and Jean Denis Coquard of the French newspaper L’Equipe.

The reporter asked Gatlin about a study that asked whether he could benefit — even if he was clean now — about the long-term benefit of steroids:

“I think it’s ridiculous. My situation was 2006. That was a decade ago. If anybody says that can happen a whole decade later, they need to go and see what’s happening in the medical world. Don’t come to me with that, you know. I have been in the sport, I have been injured since then, I have been out of the sport, now I am back in the sport and I am running very well, a lot of people have also been in the same situation I have, so those are the people you need to go ask those questions to.”

Then came a question — referenced in Tucker’s blog as well — about the possibility, suggested in a study on mice, that the positive effects of doping can linger long after doping ends.

Gatlin: “I don’t understand why you would match a laboratory mouse to a human being. That’s unfathomable to me. I don’t understand that. So that’s OK.”

A couple moments later, Weldon Johnson of LetsRun.com entered the fray.

Johnson wanted to ask the same question he had at the Relays: “I asked a question to you and Tyson …”

Gatlin, knowing full well what the question was — how do you assure people you are competing clean? — interrupted, saying, “I think Tyson covered that question,” meaning with the apology.

“I wanted to see if you would answer it.”

“He answered all the questions.”

“I think a lot of people would have more like — you haven’t really come clean about what happened in 2006 …

“There’s no comments. There’s no more comments. There’s no more comments. Do you have a question?” Gatlin pointed to his left. “I said everything I had to say on that. There’s no comment. You can read all the articles.”

“Will you admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs?”

By now the two were talking just not at but over each other.

 

A screenshot of Gatlin at Friday's news conference. In the background is Franco Fava, a longtime Italian reporter // LetsRun.com

“There’s no admitting to it. There’s articles. I had the articles. There’s no admitting to it. You can go back and read it. If you’re a history major, you can go back in the archives, go read those articles …

“So you still stick to the same story, that you’re the one guy …”

“Why do I need to change it? What is there to change?”

“That Chris Whetstine is the one who …”

“What does there need to be to change? Go ask Chris Whetstine?”

“He lives here, right?”

“I don’t know. Does he? You’re the reporter.”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“OK, go do that then. Until then, I’m going to answer these questions over here.” Again, Gatlin pointed to his left.

Johnson, undeterred, tried a new tack, referring to Trevor Graham, the coach implicated in the BALCO scandal: “Did you see anyone else in Trevor’s group doping?”

“… I don’t know anybody in those situations.”

“Do you understand how some of the public might be …”

Again, Gatlin interrupted: “Until then, I’m going to deal with the 200 meters in the Prefontaine.”

“I get that. And it’s amazing what you’ve done after four years off. But …”

“Well, if you get that, then why are you asking these questions that happened a decade ago? You’re not a history major, are you?”

Johnson: “… Because a lot of people don’t believe your story.”

Gatlin: “Are you a history major?

Johnson: “I was a history major, actually,” a 1996 Yale graduate whose thesis, “Female Labor Force Participation in 1880,” won the Charles Heber Dickerman Memorial Prize, awarded to one or more seniors presenting the best departmental essay.

Gatlin, who obviously had no knowledge of any such thing: “Good. Really? Good. Because maybe you should go do that, in a museum, or something. Because I am running track and field today. And tomorrow. And the next day after that. Which is the future. That’s why I’m here.”

At that, he turned around to the rest of the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and said, “Any questions? Any more?”

The Pre — with due respect to organizers of the other Diamond League meet in a few weeks in New York — is the premier international track meet in the United States. Gatlin, and his entourage, have to know coming in that he is going to get these kinds of questions. It’s not just L’Equipe that was here. The BBC was, too. And others.

How hard is it to be patient and polite and say, “I understand everyone’s curiosity but I ask for your understanding and patience. I have moved on and I hope you will, too.”

Or, better yet, to do some deep soul-searching and do what Gay did in the Bahamas.

What a good number of people close to the sport really want from Gatlin is a full accounting. There is a sense — and of course this is going to be hard for him to confront — that the truth remains elusive. That’s why there is such restlessness.

What’s difficult to comprehend, meanwhile, is that Gatlin is surrounded by good people. His agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, and his coach, Dennis Mitchell, are stand-up guys. If you have only a glancing knowledge of the sport, particularly in regard to Mitchell, you might not believe this is the case. But it is so.

Winning Saturday seemed a salve. At least for a while.

“I love the fans,” Gatlin said after the race. “I love that the fans love to see a race. Not just a Justin Gatlin race but just to see track and field, you know. We are not the most popular sport in the U.S. so to see the stands packed out here, you want to give back as much as you can to these fans. They come out to see a race that has action for nine seconds or 19 seconds.

“So a lot of people think, OK, they’re sitting on the stands or they’re sitting courtside for two hours or four quarters. Ours is over really quickly. So you want to give them something.”

He also said, “These fans, this is the home of Prefontaine. He’s a distance runner at the best. For them to be excited to see a sprint race, you know, these are true fans and I’m glad to be able to run out here for these fans every year.”