CHAMPION’S FATHER SLAMS ‘DISRESPECT’
THE man under the baseball hat listened to the booing and heard the inquisition before shrugging his shoulders. Willie Gatlin is used to the things people say about his son.
He was perched outside the press auditorium, watching as Justin Gatlin discussed the 9.92sec run that not only crashed a party but left a puddle of bad urine on the living room floor.
It was put to the sprinter that his first major title for 12 years might be considered a ‘disaster’ for the sport. Later, he was asked if he enjoyed being the ‘bad boy’.
All this while the man in the hat watched on, shrugging those shoulders. To understand the shrug is to understand that the Gatlins feel the 35-year-old is a victim. They will argue to allcomers that the two drugs bans he served were unfair.
It is a long-held view that Willie Gatlin outlined in an interview with Sportsmail late on Saturday night, and it is why he felt the response of the crowd to his son’s win was ‘disrespectful’.
He said: ‘It (the booing) doesn’t upset me because I know what kind of son I raised, what kind of character he has. We didn’t raise him to be like that. Speak with the tagalongs and the media and it is their loss that they can’t enjoy these sensational moments.
‘The fans booing is disrespectful to the sport. The sport has always been here and is going to be here after he leaves. He created a memory that is going to be in people’s minds a long time.’
The favourability of that memory is open to debate, as are the denials by the Gatlins that the two failed doping tests were because of attempts to cheat. In the case of the first failure, they have garnered a degree of sympathy, but in the instance of the second, a scenario laced with farce and stories of a vengeful massage, there is distinctly little.
The tale of the first test dates back to 2001, when Gatlin was 19. At the age of nine he had been put on medication for attention deficit disorder (ADD) and took Adderall for a decade, through his adolescence and into the start of his college athletics career.
It was at the US junior nationals in 2001 when he provided a sample that contained traces of amphetamine linked to his ADD medication. He was banned for two years, which was reduced to one, with the stated opinion of the US AntiDoping Agency that ‘Mr Gatlin neither cheated nor intended to cheat’.
His father’s view to Sportsmail was: ‘The first ban was bogus. My son had ADD and he still has ADD. To this day.’
The son has previously argued: ‘Other people in the sport have taken the same medication I had for ADD and only got warnings.’
The failed test that completely changed the Gatlin narrative came in 2006. By then he was the Olympic gold medallist for 100m and world champion for 100m and 200m.
At a relay race in Kansas, he was positive for testosterone. His team argued that his masseur, Christopher Whetstine, had rubbed a cream with testosterone into his buttocks and they claimed sabotage owing to Whetstine’s disgruntlement with the news that he was soon to be fired. Whetstine denied it, Gatlin could not prove his case and he was banned for eight years, later reduced to four.
Gatlin Snr said: ‘As far as the other test, we had no knowledge and nobody wants to tell the truth about it. Listen, there were research scientists we hired and the doctor said there was nothing he ingested or any type of cream he put on himself.’
The conspiracy nature of the excuse was one issue for Gatlin, and quite another was his work with disgraced coach Trevor Graham, who worked with numerous convicted dopers like Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery.
But Gatlin Snr is adamant, perhaps predictably, that it is all smoke and no fire; that a man winning a World Championship at 35 years of age should not be mourned as a tragic symptom of a badly wounded sport.
His opinion of this controversial win is that a runner has triumphed against his circumstances. ‘He served his ban and he worked his heart out doing what he could,’ Gatlin Snr said. ‘He wasn’t just lying around. He worked to come back to the sport and he worked his way back to championship form.
‘For the youngsters coming up he is trying to help to tutor and help to be good, clean athletes. He is trying to teach good character and good sportsmanship about themselves.
‘I don’t think he has regrets, it is a lesson learned. Everything happens for a reason and it gives you teaching moments. We have been through it all and we bear it all.’
Now the sport has to bear its new champion.