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Hersh: See ya, Justin, don’t let the door hit you on the way out

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EUGENE, Ore. -- Friend and competitive foe alike agreed with a federal judge that Justin Gatlin did not belong in the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials that begin Friday.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled only on jurisdictional grounds in its Thursday denial of an injunction that would have allowed the 2004 Olympic 100-meter champion to run despite his being halfway through a 4-year doping suspension.

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His peers delivered a harsh judgment on Gatlin’s decision to seek that injunction.

Tyson Gay, the reigning world champion in the 100, plainly was delighted by the judge’s decision.

‘I think it’s good for the sport, and not just for America, not just our trials,’’ Gay said. ‘It shows USA Track & Field and everyone is standing up, sticking to their guns.’’

A few minutes earlier, before he learned of the decision, Gay had expressed the same thought I did in this blog a few days ago: that Gatlin was acting selfishly.

After all, the international track federation had said Gatlin, whose suspension had been upheld by sport’s Supreme Court, could not run in the Olympics even if he makes the U.S. Team.

‘Our sport doesn’t need any more negative attention,’’ Gay said. ‘If Justin Gatlin so-called loves the sport, he would do what’s right and let these people and myself have their moment, because he has already had his moment. For a lot of us, it’s our first time trying to make the Olympic team.

‘I think it would be a little unfair and a little selfish for him to take peoples’ moment away from them.’’

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World 200-meter champion Allyson Felix, close to Gatlin for several years, admitted she would be uncomfortable having her pal in the meet.

‘I have mixed emotions,’ she said. ‘He’s my friend, and I wish him the best in anything he does.

‘When I look at it not from a personal standpoint but just purely athletically, it would be a distraction. He would be a focus of a lot of things, and that focus would be on drug-related things, and that is definitely what we are trying to get away from.’’

-- Philip Hersh

Gatlin’s presence would have reminded everyone of the sordid recent history of doping involving so many top U.S. sprinters, including Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Kelli White, Chryste Gaines and Dennis Mitchell. That would have only increased the doubts about the sport’s credibility that Gay and other post-Balco era sprinters -– a group that, ironically, Gatlin had been part of -– struggle to deal with.

Justin Gatlin claims his positive 2006 steroid test was the result of sabotage. He claimed his being banned in 2001 for a prescribed ADD medicine violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Having two positives led to a doubling of the two-year steroid ban). The problem with those arguments is there is strict liability for athletes who test positive.

Wallace Spearmon, 2005 world silver medalist in the 200, simply refused to let it bother him.

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‘That has no affect on what I came here to do,’ Spearmon said Thursday of the possibility Gatlin might run. ‘ I came here to make the team. If he runs, he just runs. I don’t have time to worry about that.’

Spearmon didn’t think Gatlin’s presence at this meet would have led to a repeat of 2004, when the presence of Jones and Montgomery turned the trials into a circus in which they were the ringmasters.

We are young, clean athletes,’’ Spearmon said. ‘You are either with us or against us.’’

It remains unclear on which side Justin Gatlin belonged.

--Philip Hersh

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