Gatlin beating Bolt nightmare for sport
Well, wasn’t that just about the last result track and field needed.
If anybody was going to knock the great Usain Bolt off his perch in his much anticipated final race, track really didn’t need it to be unrepentant drug cheat Justin Gatlin. Nobody, but nobody, wanted that specific result, one that takes the sport backwards after Bolt, in a dazzling decade of dominance, had done so much to take it forward.
But that’s what track got on the weekend at the world championships in London, and now track’s got to live with it, certainly an unfair burden for all the clean athletes out there who have tried and are trying to make their sport relevant and believable. It’s an uphill battle. No sport, other than cycling, has had its reputation so devastated by doping as has track. Almost three decades after Ben Johnson was caught red-handed in Seoul, the sport seems no further ahead in terms of making the world believe its results are legitimate and not the result of the drug cheats staying one lap ahead of the law.
Remember an entire country, Russia, is currently under suspension by the track and field world for a series of brazen, state-sponsored, systematic doping violations. The London meet took pride in holding medal reallocation ceremonies, giving 11 individual athletes and five relay teams the medals they should have won in world championships past, but were denied by cheating opponents.
It was against that background that the 35-year-old Gatlin, suspended for drug infractions in 2001and 2006, took down the seemingly unbeatable Bolt, who looked vulnerable in the semifinals and actually finished third in the final. For Canada’s Andre De Grasse, it made missing the meet because of a hamstring injury that much more painful — for Bolt, as it turned out, was ripe for the taking.
Now De Grasse will never get a shot at proving he could beat Bolt.
Nobody applauded Gatlin’s win. Most of the 60,000 fans in attendance booed. IAAF president Sebas- tian Coe said immediately afterwards that in his mind Gatlin should have been suspended for life after his second drug infraction. The best Bolt could offer in defeat was that Gatlin was a “great competitor.”
So Bolt lost, De Grasse lost, all the clean athletes in the sport lost and track lost. Bolt victories over Gatlin in recent years had all been portrayed as good triumphing over evil, and the Jamaican superstar was often credited with saving his sport by continuing to run clean, or at least by continuing never to have tested positive for performanceenhancing drugs.
Gatlin had his eight-year suspension in 2006 halved after claiming a revenge-minded masseuse rubbed a cream containing testosterone into his buttocks. He’s never apologized, never taken full responsibility, and often claimed that he was being unjustly persecuted by media who continued to refer to his drug-stained past.
Now he’s the king of the 100-metre dash, and while only a fool would believe it’s all on the up-and-up, he hasn’t tested positive since returning seven years ago. So those who boo him, or claim he shouldn’t be allowed to race at all, are left frustrated while he celebrates becoming the fastest man on the planet at such a relatively advanced age.
The next Summer Olympics are still three years away, and presumably by then Gatlin will himself have been dethroned, either by London silver medallist Christian Coleman, De Grasse or somebody else. What happens between Olympics never has the same impact as what happens at the Games themselves, so track can at least be thankful for Bolt’s brilliance last summer in Rio, and the fact that by Tokyo in 2020 we probably won’t be talking about Gatlin any more.
But for now, we are. A drug cheat is the fastest man in the world, there’s no end in sight to the Russia ban and the sport keeps unearthing old drug samples to take away medals from those who raised their arms in triumph over the past decade.
It’s a hard sport to believe in, just like cycling.
Then again, defenders of track and field point to pro football as a sport that isn’t nearly tough enough on drug use. Baseball has seen 50 suspensions of minor-league players for drug violations this season, and five at the major-league level.
Tennis star Maria Sharapova returned from a drug suspension several months ago, but that sport just embarrassed itself again by revealing Italy’s Sara Errani was assessed a relatively light twomonth ban earlier this year after convincing an International Tennis Federation tribunal that she accidentally ingested an illegal drug through her mother’s tortellini.
So it’s everywhere. No sport is untouched. Track, however, seems to have taken the biggest hit, particularly in North America where it doesn’t have the profile it once did, or the profile it still has in Europe. To many, that’s why Bolt and his successes were so important, for his popularity extended around the world and gave track and field a major star to market in the United States.
Gatlin may have won, but he’ll never be viewed in the same way Bolt was. Indeed, his triumphs at age 35 strain credulity, and we’ve all learned that in track when it seems too good to believe, it usually is.
What the sport needed on Saturday was for Bolt to triumph and walk away as the best, and for “good” to triumph over “evil” again, although it’s actually more complicated than that. Still, that result didn’t happen, and we’ll see where track goes from here. Perhaps De Grasse can be one of the athletes who can pick up the mantle of clean competition from Bolt. The Canadian has got the talent and the personality.
For now, however, it’s Gatlin who has the gold.
You can say he never should have been allowed to win it. But accepting a rewritten version of history seems to be an ongoing exercise for this sport. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.
Bolt victories over Gatlin in recent years had all been portrayed as good triumphing over evil