The Hindu : Sport / Athletics : Gatlin’s appeal to be heard next month

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 02, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport - Athletics

Gatlin’s appeal to be heard next month

LONDON: Olympic 100m champion Justin Gatlin will have his appeal against a four-year doping ban heard next month by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The hearing will take place on May 28 and 29. CAS, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, did not say where the hearing will be held.

Gatlin filed the appeal with the sport’s highest court on February 28, seeking to void the first of his two doping violations in order to allow him to compete at this year’s Beijing Olympics.

A U.S. arbitration panel reduced Gatlin’s suspension from eight years to four years, but that still would prevent him from competing in China.

Gatlin tested positive for excessive testosterone at the Kansas Relays in 2006, his second doping violation.

Attorney’s contention

His attorney, Maurice Suh, contends his first doping violation, in 2001, should be rescinded because it involved a medicine that Gatlin — then 19 — was taking for attention deficit disorder.

The U.S. Olympic trials will be held from June 27 to July 6 in Eugene, Oregon.

Gatlin says he never knowingly took a performance-enhancing drug.

The International Association of Athletics Federations, meanwhile, said it would support the World Anti-Doping Agency in its appeal against a U.S. arbitration ruling that cleared sprinter LaTasha Jenkins of using the steroid nandrolone.

In December, a three-person arbitration panel ruled the results of Jenkins’ positive doping test from a track meet in Belgium in 2006 were compromised because both European labs testing her sample violated international standards.

The IAAF said it agreed “with the WADA position on the basis that any breach did not cause or otherwise undermine the reliability of the adverse finding.” — AP

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport