Now for the Real Test

Evidence of a Steroid Is Just One Part of the Gatlin Story

Justin Gatlin faces an eight-year ban from track and field if he is found guilty of taking steroids. (Mike Ransdell - AP/Kansas City Star)

The news that came six months ago seemed all too familiar: A champion athlete tests positive for a performance-enhancing drug. The athlete immediately professes his innocence and vows to clear his name. And one day, sprinter Justin Gatlin will perhaps be remembered as nothing more than another cheat busted in the steroid era.

But an examination of Gatlin's case finds nothing routine. What emerges is a convoluted web of poorly fitting pieces of evidence that lead to no clear conclusions. It's a tale that includes an unlikely rules violator, a renegade coach, a masseur, an assault, private investigators and a strange-looking tube of cream.

The only thing not in dispute is this: All parties agree that Gatlin did indeed fail a drug test. A possible punishment is an eight-year suspension from the sport.

Gatlin, 24, arrived in Lawrence, a city in northeastern Kansas, for the Kansas Relays last April, at the forefront of a new generation of competitors who pledged to clean up the sport by proving they could win without cheating.

The Kansas Relays is a second-tier track event used primarily by American athletes as a tuneup for the European summer circuit. Gatlin anchored a winning relay, then in May traveled to Qatar, where he equaled the 100-meter world record of 9.77 seconds. It set the stage for a showdown with co-record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica to see who was the fastest man on Earth.

They never got to race.

On June 15, Gatlin was informed that a urine sample taken from him in Kansas had shown evidence of a steroid. Like many before him, Gatlin said he was innocent. Except here the story took its first strange turn: Gatlin and his lawyers didn't dispute the test result. They said someone had managed to sneak a steroid into Gatlin's system.

The case has attracted the attention of federal investigators, according to several sources, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has allowed an unusual extension to give Gatlin's lawyers time to assemble their client's defense.

The idea that Gatlin was doped without his knowledge has been dismissed by some as implausible and a smokescreen. Others, however, have raised questions about the chain of events in Kansas that illuminate the more sordid side of big-time track and field.

"I would find it really hard to believe" that Gatlin was doped unknowingly, said Peter Stubbs, an agent who represents more than a dozen track and field athletes but not Gatlin. "On the flip side, I believe pretty strongly that Justin is a clean athlete . . . and there's a problem here somewhere."

Gatlin, who won three medals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, tested negative on at least six other occasions this year, according to USADA and the IAAF, the world track and field governing body.

When Gatlin, who would not comment publicly for this article, learned of the positive result for testosterone or its precursors, his supporters at first looked with suspicion at Trevor Graham, his North Carolina-based coach. Graham gained fame for giving USADA a steroid-filled syringe in 2003 that led to the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) sports doping case. The BALCO probe has ensnared more than a dozen athletes, among them track and field champion Marion Jones and baseball slugger Barry Bonds.