Why I joined in the booing of the new 100m champion

I know how it feels to lose to a drugs cheat and Gatlin is everything we should hate in our sport

There is no denying it – like almost everyone inside the London Stadium on Saturday night, I wanted Usain Bolt to win. And if not Bolt then Christian Coleman. I know we make Justin Gatlin out to be the pantomime villain, but that’s because he is everything we don’t want the sport to be.

So, yes, I was one of the people who did boo him when he won, because that was how I felt at the time. It was a personal feeling and I think it’s because I have been cheated in the past – I fully understand how it feels to lose to drugs cheats.

Everyone has the right to their opinion and if they choose to boo then so be it. I don’t have to celebrate his success.

Having said that, after taking some time to reflect, I probably wouldn’t boo him again. Maybe the thing to do is just ignore these people. Don’t boo, but don’t acknowledge them – treat them like they are ghosts.

That’s what I did at the medal ceremony, mainly out of respect for Christian Coleman. He has been caught in the middle of the whole Gatlin versus Bolt thing and he is at the forefront of the next generation of sprinters.

I wanted him to feel good about being on that podium and proud when he heard the national anthem. He has won a silver medal at his first major championships and we have to give him the opportunity to feel good about it.

Ultimately it is the sport that allows Gatlin to be here competing and perhaps the boos should be directed at the powers who allow that to happen.

The problem the International Association of Athletics Federations has is that it doesn’t really matter what sanctions they want because it is the Court of Arbitration for Sport which has overall say and it would never sanction a lifetime ban. I’m sure the IAAF didn’t want Gatlin to be here, but it had to respect the regulations.

There is a part of me that feels sorry for Gatlin being put in this position where he is subjected to boos at one of the best moments of his career. His family are here in London and it must be awful to hear that.

But when you are wronged by someone who has cheated, it’s not nice. I finished my career and I felt unsatisfied by what I had achieved because I hadn’t hit the targets that I had set myself.

Winning a bronze at one Olympic Games was great but now, nearly a decade on, to be told that I have retrospectively won two more Olympic bronze medals is a strange feeling. It’s not just me – it’s my family, friends and support team who missed out. There’s also a financial element because I’m sure I lost out massively.

If I had been a three-time Olympic medallist after Beijing I might have done things differently. The sponsorship deals going into the London 2012 Olympics would have been crazy, so I could probably estimate that I’ve lost a good £500,000 somewhere. My life might have been very different.

Competing against someone who you know has cheated in the past is horrible. I remember when one of my Ukrainian rivals, Lyudmyla Blonska, came back from a two-year ban. I competed in a heptathlon against her in Talence and we ended on the same points score so we had to travel by car together to get our trophies. I

Maybe the thing to do is just to ignore these people – don’t boo them, just treat them like ghosts

hated everything about her. I thought there was no way she was clean and then, lo and behold, she got caught for drugs again.

With someone like Gatlin, you have to assume they are clean, but there is the question of whether there are long-standing benefits of taking drugs. Gatlin is 35 years old and it’s 12 years since he won his last global title, so there are questions to be asked.

The Americans have a different way of dealing with it where they like to give people a second chance – although with Gatlin it’s a third chance. They are all about redemption.

I get that and he is probably a lovely guy. But are his stories believable and what are the effects of the stuff he took?

As for Bolt, he stuck himself on the line because he wanted to go out with a bang. That’s what great people do. He knew he wasn’t in shape and he wasn’t capable of running below 9.90 seconds. He will have been hoping that no one else would step up their game, but Gatlin and Coleman did.

Defeat does nothing to detract from his status. He is still a legend.