Arbitrators reduce Gatlin’s ban

Sprinter Justin Gatlin got his doping ban reduced, but not by enough to make him eligible to defend his Olympic 100-meter title this year.

The 25-year-old sprinter had a potential eight-year ban reduced to four years, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said Tuesday. With the ban set to expire May 24, 2010, it means Gatlin will be on the sidelines for the Beijing Olympics in August. He needed the ban reduced to two years to be eligible for the Olympic trials in June.

“We have no higher priority than the commitment we have made to clean competition,” U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Darryl Seibel said. “If that means leaving behind when we go to the Games an athlete who has the talent and ability to break world records, but has also cheated, so be it. That’s an easy choice to make. It’s what the American public expects, and it’s what the overwhelming majority of our athletes who choose to compete clean deserve.”

Details of the ban first were reported by the Washington Post.

USADA general counsel Bill Bock confirmed the report to the Associated Press, saying arbitrators acknowledged the help Gatlin provided to federal authorities “in investigating doping in sport, to extent of wearing wire in communications with his former coach,” Trevor Graham.

The panel left open the possibility of a further reduction.

The three-member panel unanimously ruled Gatlin committed a doping offense when he tested positive for excessive testosterone in April 2006, but the sprinter’s first doping offense in 2001 troubled the group.

The 2001 findings came under different standards than those in effect now because the World Anti-Doping Code had yet to be established.

Gatlin has six months to appeal.

In 2006, Gatlin tested positive for a banned substance for the second time and, under anti-doping rules, was supposed to receive a lifetime suspension.

But because of the special circumstances behind his first positive test -- he was taking medicine to treat attention-deficit disorder -- he reached an agreement with USADA that called for a maximum eight-year ban.

Gatlin’s agreement with USADA called for him not to argue that the second positive test was faulty, but also gave him the right to seek a further reduction through arbitration.

Bock said USADA argued Gatlin didn’t provide the agency with “real material assistance” in its investigation. But Bock said Jeff Novitzky, the lead investigator in the BALCO steroid investigation, testified about the assistance Gatlin provided to federal authorities in the Graham case.

Graham faces charges of lying to federal investigators.

Seibel said he had not seen the decision, but he said the USOC was “concerned about the length of time it is taking to resolve these cases. It should not take 18 months, or longer, to reach a decision in an anti-doping arbitration.”

Gatlin, who held himself up as a role model for clean competition before his positive test, has said he doesn’t know how steroids got into his system before the April 2006 test.

Graham has accused Oregon massage therapist Chris Whetstine of rubbing a steroid cream on Gatlin to trigger the positive test, but Whetstine repeatedly has denied the allegations.