ONE of the most awkward events in these Olympic Games was completed last night in a typically awkward way. The Olympic 100 metre title was won in 9.85 seconds by Justin Gatlin, a 22-year-old from Brooklyn who once served a one-year ban for testing positive for amphetamines.
It would be splendid to report that this famous and famously troubled event was getting a new face and a clean image, but Gatlin is trained by Trevor Graham, the former coach to Marion Jones, under whose charge six other athletes have tested positive for drugs. Behind Gatlin, in fourth, was Shawn Crawford, who is also coached by Graham. In third was Maurice Greene , whose own coach has had three athletes test positive in recent months. In second place was Francis Obikwelu, the Nigerian who runs for Portugal and who has never been linked with a drugs case.
The race itself could not have been much tighter, only three hundredths of a second splitting the first three. It was a surprise, too, that neither of the big names in the early rounds, Crawford and Asafa Powell, were able to assert themselves when it really counted. From a seat in the stands, though, it was impossible not to wonder which were the more salient facts — the race statistics or the track-record of its winner.
Gatlin’s positive was in 2001. He was given a two-year ban that was suspended after a year when he pleaded that he had been taking the drugs because he suffered from a medical problem referred to as attention deficit disorder. He came back in 2003 and won the world indoor 60 metres in Birmingham; he has now reached the pinnacle.
Quite how high that is, though, seems more in doubt than ever. This may be doing gross discredit to a young man, but this is the tragedy now with this event. Here in the Olympic Stadium last night we may have clapped eyes on one of the most genuinely talented young men of all time, but with so much negative information around, what do you believe?
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The 100 metres was always the one, the blue riband event, one of the defining moments of the Games. But the unmistakable feeling is that gold in the 100 metres had this year lost its lustre. Fastest man on earth? But how did he do it? Suspicion, cynicism, designer pharmacies and drugs busts. The defining moment has become indefinable. And having an Olympic champion with a record hardly helps.
All the preamble had been filled with the characteristic pouting and flexing and dominance assertion that is the stuff of sprinting lore. Crawford, who seems to have decided that he is going to be the showman of the piece, went through his semi-final chatting and laughing with Gatlin. The swaggering contained a laid-back element to it thanks to the strong Caribbean influence. Great spectacle, though whether this is sport or entertainment is now the question.
It is a shame that no British runners were able to assert themselves sufficiently to become a part of it. Mark Lewis-Francis and Jason Gardener went out in the semi-finals, both finishing fifth, just one place away from the final.
Gardener, who has come back from a double hernia operation, ran a season’s best and has been unlucky with the timing of his injury. Lewis-Francis, however, posted a disappointing 10.28sec and remains a prodigious talent confounded by the mental challenges of his metier.
The combined effect, with Darren Campbell already out and struggling with a hamstring injury and Dwain Chambers long ago banned for drugs, is that this was the first Olympic 100 metres final since 1976 in which Great Britain was unrepresented.
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What seemed certain last night, though, is that a new era of sprinters is upon us. The reign of Greene is now surely at an end. Gatlin is now a world figure and maybe he can carry that mantle and restore some respect to this once-noble sport. Maybe next time he wins a fantastic race we will be dwelling more on the drama of the present and not the suspicion of the past.
For the moment, the 100 metres does not appear such a complicated business. Why, Gardener was asked after his semi-final, is everyone running so fast? His response? “I best not answer that.”