If Justin Gatlin wins the 100m on Sunday, a feat he is firmly on course for if predictions are based on current form, the American may just be the least popular world champion of all time. The IAAF president-elect Sebastian Coe has said the prospect makes him feel “queasy”. Others have used far stronger words than that.
But none of that is going to stop the sprinter potentially toppling Usain Bolt when the pair line up for the sport’s blue riband event in the Bird’s Nest Stadium where the latter made his name.
Sport cries out for a narrative, for how else are we to make sense of it? Life tends to be a bit more complex. And Gatlin, running faster than ever at the age of 33 and poised to possibly repeat his feat in Helsinki a decade ago and win gold in both the 100m and 200m, has been cast as the sport’s bogeyman.
Amid a welter of other doping allegations, for some a Gatlin victory would be a disaster for athletics. For others, it could be the shock it needs to administer the changes required to redouble its anti-doping efforts. Others still listen to the 2004 Olympic champion’s mitigation (or, if you prefer, excuses) for his two doping offences and believe he deserves a hearing.
One thing is indisputable. Five years since he finished serving the second of his bans for testosterone found in his system that he blamed on a masseuse with a grudge, Gatlin is running faster than he has done before. Not only that, heis running faster than anyone of his age has run before.
Particularly set against Bolt’s travails this season, which he blamed this week on a joint problem and are only partly mitigated by his 9.87sec victory at the Anniversary Games in London, Gatlin’s sub 9.8 performances and metronomic consistency have provoked admiration and alarm in equal measure.
When Gatlin was caught for the second time his coach was the infamous Trevor Graham, who the sprinter Dennis Mitchell claimed at the Balco drug trial had injected him with human growth hormone. To the consternation of some former American athletes, Mitchell is now a coach to Gatlin and others on the US team.
Since his bronze in London in 2012, Gatlin has been getting steadily faster. This season he has been nothing short of a revelation, consistently blowing away the field and unbeaten in an astonishing 27 races.
That has led to speculation that he may still be benefitting from the lasting effects of banned substances. Others have wondered whether his lengthy suspension left him with younger legs than his years.
His personal best 9.74 in Doha in May made him the fifth fastest sprinter of all time behind Bolt, Asafa Powell, Yohan Blake and team-mate (and fellow convicted drug cheat) Tyson Gay.
Bolt has been the master of all he has surveyed at major championships (a false start in Daegu in 2011 aside) since he exploded into the public consciousness in 2008 with that 100m and 200m double.
To many, Gatlin remains in denial over his doping past. His first ban in 2002 was reduced when he proved the amphetamines found in his system were from medication he had been taking for 10 years to treat attention deficit disorder.
His second, an eight-year ban later halved to four, he blamed on testosterone cream rubbed into his buttocks by a masseur with a grudge. To bring matters full circle, that explanation was cited by Alberto Salazar in his recent 10,000 word rebuttal of doping claims as the reason why he experimented with rubbing testosterone cream into the skin of his sons.
Earlier this year Gatlin said he did not believe he should be called a two-time doper given the explanation of his first offence.
“There’s no end to this,” he told Sports Illustrated. “I served my time. I did my punishment. I sat out four years and here I am, still getting punished for something that happened to me, literally, a decade ago.”
For his part Bolt, whose history shows he peaks on the big occasion, was again asked this week how it felt to be cast as the sport’s saviour. Time and again he demurred. But that will not stop the rest of the world trying, not least because some other likely finalists – including Powell and Gay – have also served doping bans.
Instead, the Jamaican world record holder was keen to emphasise that he was back to his best – even if, for him, he did not sound wholly convincing.
Gatlin’s dominance this season has asked some pretty powerful questions of the sport. About cheating, about redemption, about whether drug taking can result in benefits that last longer than the ban, about whether Nike should be handing a lucrative contract to a twice-banned athlete just because he is the fastest man on the planet this year.
For Bolt and for those who believe that only the Jamaican can save the sport from the reputational hammer blow of a Gatlin gold, nothing less than victory will do.
