Justin Gatlin the villain of Usain Bolt's athletics swansong, but does drug cheat deserve the boos?
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A split second before Usain Bolt had done his dash, international athletics got what it deserved.
That the twice-convicted drug cheat Justin Gatlin beat Bolt to the line meant the sport's lacklustre efforts in fighting doping were fiercely exposed on a night that was supposed to end in euphoric celebration.
This was horribly unfair to Bolt. The great Jamaican sprinter did not deserve to have his going away party pooped on like this — at least as far as we know.
But as the jeers rang out in London's Olympic Stadium, another issue was lost. Did Gatlin alone deserve to carry the can for an entire sport's malfeasance?
Even before the starter's gun the American was thrown to a bloodthirsty crowd as the ultimate villain. Gatlin was the reviled challenger to the most beloved track and star athlete of this, and perhaps any, generation.
There was only one greater crime that Gatlin could have committed than daring to compete against Bolt on his farewell stage: beating him.
Gatlin's punishment for ignoring this red light was to celebrate his victory by ceremonially bowing at Bolt's feet, an act performed to symbolise the great champion's unquestioned pre-eminence. But also, one suspects, a desperate form of prostration to the jeering crowd by Gatlin before he disappeared up the tunnel.
Yet there is an alternate version to Gatlin's story that was drowned out by the angry mob.
Gatlin's defenders claim the now two-time 100m world champion has been unfairly scapegoated, given his first suspension was for in-competition use of a prescribed medication and the second was, he claims, the result of sabotage by a disaffected coach.
The defence, it should be noted, goes quiet at the mention of the inside information Gatlin gave investigators in the notorious Balco drug lab case — information that did not self-incriminate, but placed him at the scene of the syringe.
There was also a starkly parochial element to Gatlin's vilification. The crowd that booed Gatlin off the track had the previous day lauded local hero Mo Farah, whose name had appeared on a list of suspected dopers distributed by Russian hackers.
At these world championships, the benefit of the doubt has an English accent.
Then there are those romantics who believed Gatlin deserved a second and third chance and that his victory was actually a wonderful ''comeback story''. Bolt, who consoled the American as the crowd booed, seemed more believing of this fairytale than most.
But even if you pay lip service to Gatlin's defence and sympathise with his plight, his victory remained symbolic of a sport that has failed to adequately address its drug problem and, worse, actively sought to conceal it.
Perhaps the most valid defence of Gatlin is that he has been forced to bear the brunt of derision that would be more fairly directed at those opportunists and denialists in the expensive seats who have allowed cheats to prosper.
For those same officials, Bolt has provided the ultimate camouflage. The powerful, charismatic, vivacious and — so far as we knew — clean Jamaican was everything we hoped our athletes would be and, the IAAF wanted us to believe, most often were.
Win or lose, Bolt's last individual race should have been an occasion to exalt the historic performances of the greatest sprinter we have seen.
I was privileged to be sitting near the finish line in Beijing when Bolt astonished not merely with his incredible acceleration, but by slowing in the final metres to celebrate victory while still clocking a scorching world record 9.69 seconds.
Bolt shone during an era when the villainy of the Communist Bloc pin cushions and the roid-riddled Johnson had been usurped by the sophisticated pharmaceutical subterfuge of Balco and the state-sponsored — and IAAF-ignored — Russian doping program.
What's more, some of Bolt's greatest feats came after that moment when Lance Armstrong's confession dispelled forever the literal-minded myth that no positive test meant no cheating.
But for those of us lucky enough to have witnessed Bolt at his scintillating best, there was a single factor that made you believe his times were 'real'.
It was that large, loose-limbed, almost raw-boned physique that lacked the absurdly revealing 'walnut in a condom' muscularity of proven dopers such as Ben Johnson.
Various studies seemed to confirm what the naked eye suggested — Bolt's body was built for the kind of natural speed previously only thought possible with chemical enhancement.
Again, history might prove this conclusion absurdly naive. Don't blame the observers for this sad scepticism, blame Bolt's doped-up rivals and, most of all, blame those officials who stuck their head in the sand.
For years the athletics world has echoed with the hollow promises of the IAAF who pledged to clean up their syringe-covered backyard.
Yet as recently as the Rio Olympics, where the IOC brokered a cowardly deal to allow Russian athletes to compete as individuals, they have failed to adequately prosecute, punish and deter.
And so on that rare non-Olympic day when the eyes of the world were focused on the track, those failures came home to roost.
Instead of farewelling one of the greatest figures in the history of sport, the IAAF crowned a world 100m champion who didn't take a lap of honour because he would have to dodge flying beer cups.
Thus in hosting a contentious, rancorous aftermath to its most glamorous event rather than an orgy of congratulation for its greatest star, athletics was exposed for the farce it has been.
Topics: athletics, sport, doping-in-sports, england, united-states, jamaica
