Gatlin gets caught up in sting on drugs use
Fresh doping scandal as sprint champion linked to claims over his coach and agent
Justin Gatlin, the world 100 metres champion, is at the centre of a new doping scandal after members of his team offered to illicitly supply performance-enhancing drugs.
Gatlin and his coach are now being investigated by sports and doping authorities after an investigation uncovered how members of his entourage offered to provide prescriptions in a false name and smuggle the substances to America.
Undercover reporters from the UK Telegraph newspaper visited Gatlin’s Florida training camp where his coach, the former Olympic gold medallist Dennis Mitchell, and an athletics agent allegedly offered to supply and administer testosterone and human growth hormone for an actor training for a film.
The products were to be provided via a doctor in Austria. The total fee for the project was US$250,000.
Mitchell and the agent, Robert Wagner, were also secretly recorded claiming the use of banned substances in athletics was still widespread as they described how positive doping tests could be avoided.
In one meeting, the agent claimed Gatlin had himself been taking performance enhancing drugs — which the sprinter has strenuously denied.
Gatlin’s legal representatives announced yesterday he had sacked his coach and revealed more than five years’ worth of official drugs tests to show “he has never tested positive for any banned substance”.
Gatlin’s agent for the last 14 years, Renaldo Nehemiah, said Wagner had worked for Gatlin on no more than two or three occasions and the sprinter was not present when banned substances were discussed with the agent or coach.
The revelations threaten to reignite the scandal of doping in sport just three years after Russia was said to have systematically doped its athletes.
Gatlin himself has twice been banned for doping, in 2001 and 2006.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) and the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), said they had opened an investigation into the sprinter, the agent and the coach after being made aware of the Telegraph investigation.
Lord Coe, the IAAF president, said: “These allegations are extremely serious and I know the independent Athletics Integrity Unit will investigate in accordance with its mandate.”
Gatlin controversially beat Usain Bolt at the Jamaican world record holder’s final competitive race at the world championships in London this year.
Gatlin was booed by the crowd, with some commentators unhappy he was allowed to compete as a result of his chequered past.
The Telegraph began the undercover investigation in July after being told specific agents and trainers were involved in administering and supplying drugs to athletes and that the regulators had failed to take action.