- COMMENT
- Sport
This was published 7 years ago
Usain Bolt is indeed Superman, but don't think that Justin Gatlin is a villain
By Darren Kane
Once or twice – every now and then, if you're blessed with riotous good fortune – people will gatecrash your existence; and you just know from that day on, you'll never be able to replace them if they left again. Those with that innate ability, to stop an atomic clock with an imperceptible wink. People who can spin your world right off its axis.
Distilled down to its essence, life is just one gigantic labyrinth of sliding doors, smoke and mirrors, and rollercoasters hurtling who-the-hell-knows-where. To those who end up utterly irreplaceable, it's pure happenstance you ever ended up on the same fairground ride at all. Yet if they ever hopped off, life thereafter would be rendered horrendously incomplete.
I'm no scavenger of autographs (I'm a grown up, sometimes), but one particular night seven years ago, at a black tie function in Sydney, was unique. Late in the evening, encouraged by one-too-many glasses of personality, I snatched a program off of my table and sidled up to the guest of honour. In the futile quest, that he might scribble his name on it. After penetrating the concentric circles of punters applying the same elaborate strategy (and to my amazement) he and I ended up conversing for maybe 30 seconds or so. Until a phalanx of minders moved me swiftly on.
I'd met plenty of athletes before, many who'd climbed their own Everest. This time however, you just knew this athlete was different. Twenty-four years old, and yet to encroach on legend status. But distinctive in that otherworldly, ethereal way.
Hero and... villain? Usain Bolt with Justin Gatlin.Credit: Matt Dunham
The person who signed my program that night was one Usain St Leo Bolt, and I've kept it safely tucked away ever since. I retrieved it on Tuesday night (even if only to verify the date of the dinner – nobody can remember everything). Fond memories.
As far as athletics is concerned Usain Bolt has, for the past decade, transcended his sport in utter defiance of the myriad crises that have otherwise befallen it. For years, Bolt has remained (and still is) that one athlete with an intrinsic ability to make time stand still. However, the reality is that after tomorrow, Bolt will retire. His departure will leave a gaping, cavernous hole; the severity of his loss can't be underestimated. We won't see the likes of Bolt again in our lifetime.
That Bolt was beaten into third place, in his last 100-metre race last weekend, does nothing to tarnish his legacy. Just as Sir Donald Bradman's legend wasn't diminished by reason of him being dismissed without score in his final dig in 1948. Instead, Bolt's defeat merely illustrates that he too puts on his trousers one leg at a time. It's kind of nice to know that Bolt indeed is human; fallible. And (I hope like hell) clean; where so, so many of his opponents glow bright orange on even gentle inspection.
So from that perspective it's terribly easy to justify the eruption of boos and hisses that accompanied Justin Gatlin's victory, in what was Bolt's last race in the blue riband. Coming into these IAAF World Championships, although Gatlin was already twice a world champion and an Olympic gold medallist, he's also twice a convicted doper. To some, Gatlin represents arrogance, cheating and all that's wrong with how sport deals with the aftermath of doping. Lex Luthor to Usain Bolt's Superman.
No fairytale end: Usain Bolt.Credit: AP
Yes, it's awfully convenient to boo Gatlin, or to paint him out to be some sort of Shakespearean villain. But it's also dead hypocritical, and quite naive.
Hypocritical in that there's an incredible number of athletes in all sports, who've fallen foul of what are necessarily draconian rules intended to prevent doping in sport. Athletes who've been afforded second chances.
Paul Gallen played his 300th NRL match last night. That Gallen is able to do so is down to the second chance afforded to him, after he and 50 other AFL and rugby league players were sanctioned for doping; the direct consequence of Stephen Dank and his black hat brethren infecting Australian sport. Nobody boos Gallen now – nobody should, based on the accepted circumstances of his breach.
But you say, Justin Gatlin's twice an offender! Which is entirely correct. It was George Bernard Shaw who wrote that success does not consist in never making mistakes, but never making the same one a second time. Pray tell therefore, how can anyone acclaim Gatlin's success? Perhaps the answer is something along the line that it's subjective as to whether to applaud; yet to jeer is wrong.
Gatlin's second ban for doping – a four-year expulsion from sport – ended seven years ago; SEVEN YEARS. Gatlin has done much since, to rehabilitate himself. Gatlin's sanction was rightfully confirmed on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, sitting in a composition of three judges including Professor Richard McLaren. The same Richard McLaren, who led the WADA-commissioned investigation into systemic, state-orchestrated doping in Russia. The CAS reached the correct sanction, even after concluding that intentional doping couldn't be discounted (regardless as to Gatlin's explanation, that it was all the fault of an evil masseuse). The maximum penalty could have been life.
But it's Gatlin's first sanction, imposed in 2002, which ought to give pause for introspection before jumping to catcall and hiss. It's the exceptional circumstances of this case, which meant the CAS didn't give Gatlin a life sentence in 2006.
Gatlin was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder before the age of 10, and took the prescribed medication Adderall for a decade. Adderall contains amphetamine – prohibited in-competition in 2001 under the IAAF's rules (there was no restriction on out-of-competition use). Gatlin stopped taking Adderall days before the US junior championships because it made him feel sluggish, and because he knew it was prohibited in competition.
Gatlin was subjected to in-competition testing in mid-June 2001. A small amount of amphetamine was detected in his urine. A doping panel banned him for two years, the IAAF later reduced that holiday to just over 12 months. Gatlin never applied for a medical exemption to use Adderall, but the tribunal found he would likely have been granted one. Gatlin was banned on the back of specific findings that he "certainly is no doper", and that his was an inadvertent, "paperwork" violation. In the panel's own words, Gatlin's case was comprised of "unique circumstances".
Justin Gatlin is no Lance Armstrong in spikes. Now, that of course may not be enough for you. You may take the view, that every athlete convicted of doping should be banned for life – and hectored mercilessly in lieu of such a sanction. That's your call, but if it is, then bloody well be consistent. Don't pick Justin Gatlin out for special treatment, just because he ruined the Usain Bolt fairytale.
For mine, I'm just sad. Usain Bolt is one of those people who has come into sport and who has now just about departed again. He's irreplaceable. Sometimes, some people, they just have that effect on you.