Gatlin ready to run hard in comeback races

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RAKVERE Estonia (Reuters) - Sprinter Justin Gatlin is nervous but ready to run under 10 seconds in two 100 meter races in Estonia this week that will launch his return from a four-year doping ban, he said Monday.

Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic 100 meters champion, will compete at a meeting in Rakvere, Estonia Tuesday and again five days later in Tallinn.

“I will be ready to run and to run fast,” Gatlin told a news conference, adding “any athlete would be nervous going into a competition.”

He has not run a competitive race since June 2006 after being banned because of a positive test for the male sex hormone testosterone and its precursors.

Gatlin said that using the techniques he has been taught by veteran sprint coach Loren Seagrove, “I can hopefully easily get under 10 seconds.”

The 28-year-old, who regained his eligibility in July after serving a four-year ban, said he was looking forward to the next Olympic Games.

“I can’t wait for London 2012,” he said, adding: “I want to go into the sport given that I might be a just little rusty and have a little dust on me, and I need to just knock it off.”

Many expected him to have difficulty finding races even after the ban expired, because of a Euro Meetings recommendation not to invite athletes who bring dispute to the sport.

But organizers of the Estonian meetings, which are not members of the Euro group, said they welcomed Gatlin’s participation and looked forward to him setting a new national record for the Baltic country of under 10.10 seconds.

Gatlin’s personal best for the 100 meters is 9.85 seconds with no sprinters at the meeting with a personal best under 10 seconds.

His closest rival at the meet will be compatriot J-Mee Samuels, with a season and personal best of 10.19 seconds.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idCATRE67142020100802?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

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I can’t wait. I’m calling 10.1 or better barring crap conditions.

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Justin Gatlin ends four-year drugs ban as US sprinter makes low-key comeback in Estonia
Justin Gatlin, once hailed as the world’s fastest man, returns to competitive athletics in northern Estonia on Tuesday after serving a four-year ban.

By Brendan Gallagher
Published: 7:11PM BST 02 Aug 2010

For a man who has been existing in the twilight zone it seems strangely appropriate. “Good, bad, indifferent, guilty or not, I have served my time,” insists the former Olympic and world champion. "I just want to come back and be able to run and compete like anybody else. It is in my heart. This is what I do. I feel I owe it to my fans and friends to show them I can still do it. But it is almost half a decade since I ran.

“Denial, anger, sadness, a little bit of depression, embarrassment set in but now I am coming to a point where I am more calm, more mellow.”

Gatlin, who became a father for the first time two months ago, finished his ban less than a fortnight ago and the organisers of the BIGBANK Golden League meeting – “Estonia’s leading track and field series” according to their promotional blurb – have lost little time in persuading him to appear at the ramshackle Kadriory Stadium in Rakvere.

“We had no problems with asking Justin if he would like to compete,” said organiser Taabe Esperk. "He has served his ban and is free to run. There were athletes who had served bans for drugs at the European Championships where I have just returned from. Where is the difference there? It is for other meetings to decide whether they will allow him to compete but we are happy.

“By running here Justin is promoting our meeting. We will have hopefully 4,000 spectators instead of 1,000. We will have live TV, we will have the interest of the athletics world on our meeting. He looks fit and has been telling us that if conditions were right he feels capable of breaking 10 seconds but we will see. Four years is a long time to be away.”

Gatlin’s fall had been harder and more painful than most and has been magnified in any case by the emergence of Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay.

Gatlin became yesterday’s man virtually overnight, unlamented and barely mentioned. Yet when he tested positive for testosterone in 2006 Gatlin was the biggest name in the sport. The reigning Olympic 100m champion from Athens, Gatlin had completed a 100 and 200m double at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki and had just broken the world 100m record with a run of 9.76sec in Doha in Qatar.

The B sample from the positive test at a meeting in Lawrence Kansas in April 2006 confirmed his guilt, although he has continued to protest his innocence.

A two-year ban in 2001 for amphetamines, later overturned, when he claimed the positive test result was because of medication used to treat attention deficit disorder, did not sit well with the authorities either and a life ban appeared likely. Eventually, in December 2007, a four-year ban was confirmed.

It has been a rough time. Of his sponsors, Nike remained with him but others did not, and there was an abortive attempt at an NFL career, trying out with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At 28 though, he believes there is just time to stage a serious comeback ahead of the 2012 Olympics. Unlike Great Britain, the United States Olympic authority does not bar athletes who have served a drugs ban from competing at subsequent Olympics. USA Track and Field chief executive Doug Logan has confirmed that Gatlin would be eligible if he qualified through the US trials.

“Perhaps I will have a longer shelf life than most because I have been sitting on the shelf,” says Gatlin of that possibility.

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I’m betting 10.27, just because it seems that returns are always underwhelming.

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i say 10.45

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10.4-10.6…

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ATLANTA – Justin Gatlin knew he’d be labeled a cheat after failing a drug test and being banned from track and field. He just didn’t know his orange Escalade would be branded, too.
The sprinter awoke one morning in his native Pensacola, Fla., shortly after being disgraced to find his truck scarred.
“Steroid user,” it read.
“In my hometown, that happened in my hometown,” Gatlin said last week, still with a sense of disbelief four years later. “That really broke me down because I felt like my home, my neighborhood, my parents’ neighborhood was a safe haven for me.”
Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic 100-meter champion, one-time world-record holder and world’s fastest man, saw his kingdom crumble after testing positive for excessive testosterone in April 2006. He kept his medals, and litigation reduced an eight-year ban to four years, which ended July 24.
Shunned by major European meets because of his tainted rep, Gatlin returns to competition this week with two 100-meter races in tiny Estonia, the first one on Tuesday. One organizer said he was glad to have the American sprinter so somebody could break the meet record of 10.28 seconds. Gatlin, now 28, beat that time when he was a freshman at the University of Tennessee.
He returns to a track world turned upside down since he ruled it. Usain Bolt owns the throne now, and Tyson Gay is the new American king. Gatlin can’t hang with either at this point and perhaps never will. So why come back?
“I couldn’t let my career end on that note,” said Gatlin, who still can’t reason why he tested positive in ‘06, but accepted the accuracy of the result and cut ties with then-coach Trevor Graham.
Consider all the sprinters who faded away after steroid scandals. It won’t take much for Gatlin’s comeback to be successful in comparison. Gatlin won’t say what it will take specifically, but he knows he can reclaim some sort of place in elite track and field.
Gatlin hopes that one race will lead to another and another as he continues to claw back into the sport. The 2011 world championships and the 2012 London Olympics surely run through his head.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and USA Track and Field offer support. USATF CEO Doug Logan said Gatlin is a unique case for the organization, which is working to find a way to assist athletes transitioning back into competition. He met with Gatlin before the comeback to make clear certain expectations. To Logan’s knowledge, they’ve been met.
Logan, like many, is intrigued at how the plot will unfold.
“It’s almost like a three-act play,” he said. “Athlete strives. Athlete meets adversity. Athlete either overcomes adversity or is overcome by it. You can almost put every athlete’s story on a vignette that you can put on a stage.”
Gatlin’s time away from the spotlight brought a kaleidoscope of emotions.
At first, denial. Then frustration and determination. He shed a track suit for a collared shirt and tie, spikes for dress shoes and reached into his wallet for six figures’ worth of legal fees to try to clear his name.
“Go sit in a room with no windows – all day – and listen to people argue about me and what my character is,” Gatlin said. “I’ve never seen these people before in my life, being bombarded with people trying to end my career and my lawyer trying to save my career at the same time.”
He was thrown a life preserver when the ban was cut from eight years to four with the opportunity to return in his 20s. He turned to the NFL and passed time by trying out as a wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints, Houston Texans, Tennessee Titans and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Gatlin was left with no contract offers and 20 pounds of extra muscle that many men may envy, but not track athletes. Enter Loren Seagrave, an Atlanta-based track coach who might know better than anybody how to get Gatlin back.
Gatlin was Seagrave’s second major rebuilding project. Twenty years ago, Seagrave agreed to guide stripped 1988 Olympic gold medalist Ben Johnson’s return from a two-year steroid suspension.
Seagrave and Johnson split a couple weeks after his comeback race, reportedly so Seagrave could move back to the U.S. and spend more time with his wife. Two years after that, Johnson failed another test and was banned for life.
Seagrave cautions expectations for Gatlin’s comeback, just like he did with Johnson. The closest thing to a specific prediction he’s given for Gatlin is a possible sub-10 in Estonia, if the conditions are right (10.0 would have placed seventh at the 2008 Olympics, and 9.77 was Gatlin’s best time wiped out by the suspension).
If there’s any similarities Seagrave sees from Johnson’s case to Gatlin’s, it’s this: “Forget about the things that you used to be able to do,” he said. “Keep moving and keep trying to re-engineer the athlete.”
Gatlin required plenty of physical tweaks. He puked his way through the first day of training with Seagrave’s group as he ramped up the comeback last fall.
“It was like carrying a military backpack [while running],” said Gatlin, who works out with Olympians Angelo Taylor, Dwight Phillips and Travis Padgett, among others.
His nickname in training was “pork chop” until the weight started to come down. He’s at 190 pounds now, still a few more than his peak shape a half-decade ago. Financially, he looks fine going by his wheels, a black Maserati with a “J GAT” plate. Personally, he finds perspective from 3-month-old son Jace Alexander.
Gatlin said he was drug tested once in the last four years. He puts the same supplements and vitamins into his body as before the suspension, but he also keeps a list of banned substances handy. In that sense, he’s learned from 2008 gold medalists LaShawn Merritt and Shelly-Ann Fraser, who blamed positive tests on not reading fine print and failing to declare dental painkillers, respectively.
Any slip up on Gatlin’s part would kill his career, so he treads carefully.
“Even words you can’t pronounce, you look for it [on the list] and you try to match it up,” Gatlin said. “Even when you think [you can eat or drink something], you’re still skeptical. It’s almost like, don’t [try anything new] at all. That’s what you feel like.”
Gatlin receives aid and inspiration from several sources, even those superstitious and spiritual. The man has 11 tattoos, the freshest of which is a quarter-sized four-leaf clover on his right wrist from a couple years ago.
“I felt then like I needed some luck,” he said.
The bio on his Twitter profile reads, “from heaven to hell and back,” and just last week, Gatlin dreamed he was burying his old self. He remembered placing a lily on fresh dirt at the grave and moving on.
“I’m a new person,” Gatlin said. “I’m a new Justin.”

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/more/08/02/gatlin/#ixzz0vXsUWRgI