Last week at the IAAF World Championships, held at the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, Usain Bolt performed his now familiar routine. He completed the sprint treble. He won both the 100- and the 200-m dash, and he anchored his country Jamaica to a resounding victory in the 4x100-m relay. To many who see Bolt as the supreme athlete, this was hardly surprising. But as astounding as it might seem, Bolt entered these events with a spectre of doubt looming over his ability to win gold. In fact, in at least one of these events — the 100-m sprint — Bolt wasn’t even projected to win. America’s Justin Gatlin, who was 0.14 seconds faster than Bolt in the heats, and who came into the finals on the back of a 28-race unbeaten streak, began as the overwhelming bookmaker’s favourite.
So, when Bolt crossed the line a mere 0.01 seconds ahead of Gatlin, there was much for his fans to be thrilled about. Their joy doubled when Bolt repeated the act, in the 200-m race. This time, he left Gatlin completely in his wake, and sped away from the entire pack with electrifying grace. As the Jamaican galloped to glory, ecstasy and delight weren’t the only feelings among athletics fans. There was also a sense of profound relief.
“He’s saved his title, he’s saved his reputation, he may have even saved his sport,” the former world champion Steve Cram said in commentary for the BBC, of Bolt, as he pipped Gatlin in the 100-m dash. Had Gatlin won, as Cram was alluding to, the world of athletics would have been left smeared by an irredeemable loss of integrity. Although Gatlin is incensed at being referred to as a “two-times cheat,” it is a matter of fact that he has twice been disqualified for consuming prohibited substances.
In 2001, Gatlin was banned for two years after he tested positive for a banned amphetamine. But the sanction was reduced after he explained how the substance had purportedly made his way into his bloodstream through medication that was meant to treat an attention deficit disorder. In 2006, Gatlin accepted an eight-year ban after the proscribed steroid testosterone had been found to have exogenously made its way into his body. Gatlin’s explanation, on this occasion, was particularly novel: his massage therapist, he claimed, had rubbed a cream with the substance on his body, without his knowledge. As it happened, an arbitration panel reduced Gatlin’s ban to just four years, in view of his supposed cooperation with the US Anti-Doping Agency.
More recent tests of Gatlin have apparently revealed nothing untoward. But his extraordinary feats in the past few years, given his earlier doping bans, have created a belief that the drugs he took during the formative phase of his career are continuing to positively impact his performance. In the last two years, just as other athletes have become slower, Gatlin, who is in his thirties, has produced remarkable timings. Had there been no veneer of cheating surrounding Gatlin’s career, his current feats would have been a cause to hail him as a great champion. But any trust that existed has now completely dissipated.
“It shows one of two things: either he’s still taking performance-enhancing drugs to get the best out of him at his advanced age, or the ones he did take are still doing a fantastic job,” Dai Greene, a former British 400-m hurdles world champion, told the BBC’s Tom Fordyce late last year. “Because there is no way he can still be running that well at this late point in his career.”
Sebastian Coe, who recently assumed office as the president of the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF), expressed a similar uneasiness at Gatlin’s success. “I’m hardly going to sit here — given everything I’ve said — and say that I’m anything other than queasy at the thought of athletes that have served bans for serious infringement going on to win championship titles,” Coe said, before the event began in Beijing. The Brit, who is an Olympic gold medallist himself, must certainly be relieved at Bolt’s success. But what was telling, for instance, during the 100-m final was that four of the nine athletes competing for gold had previously been suspended for taking drugs.
Exacerbating the lack of reliability in athletics is a new report by the The Sunday Times , which chronicles what it terms an “extraordinary extent of cheating” by athletes in the last decade. According to the report, which is based on leaked files from the IAAF’s database, 146 medals, including 55 golds, in endurance events — from 800-m races to the marathon — at the Olympics and world championships between 2001 and 2012 were secured by athletes whose tests exposed suspicious results.
Today, perhaps there’s little that the IAAF can do to reverse its previous tolerance of repeat offenders, and its inability to clean athletics comprehensively of its murk and dirt. But, as Bolt’s rivalry with Gatlin has shown, a failure to act decisively against those found guilty of doping can deeply damage the sport. Come the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro next year, we will all still be sailing in the same boat, hoping Bolt can deliver to us a moral victory, a defeat of Gatlin.
(Suhrith Parthasarathy is a Chennai-based lawyer and writer)