Justin Gatlin's Track Comeback Should Be Touted from the Rooftops

American sprinter Justin Gatlin's racing campaign in 2014 has been one of the most dominant by any track athlete all year. His comeback from a four-year doping ban during 2006-2010 should be hailed in the sport of track and field as the successful reclamation of an athletic career gone astray.

Undefeated in 19 races, the former Olympic and world champion owns the top two times of the year in both the 200-meter and 100-meter dashes. In 2014, he rang up eight of the world's top-10 times in the latter. He would have run even more races (19 sprint finals appearances is unheard of in today's era of overly cautious handlers) if not for his exclusion from three Diamond League meets based on his former transgressions.

(UPDATE: Sept. 10, 2014, 5pm pacific) USA track's governing body (USATF) is reporting that Gatlin has been selected to receive the Athlete of the Week Award based on his winning the season-long Diamond League points competition and his impressive 100/200 double win in Brussels. Then, in his final race of the season, he produced a 9.83 100-meters victory in Reiti, Italy, to cap his undefeated season.

At 32, Gatlin adequately filled the Jamaican void created by a gimpy Usain Bolt and a recuperating Yohan Blake. But it's not as if Bolt and Blake's presence would have mattered this year. Gatlin produced his personal best time in the 100 (9.77 seconds) in Brussels. Similarly, he reeled off a personal best of 19.68 in the 200 at Monaco.

And when his 10 best 100-meter times since 2012 are compiled, an impressive 9.82 average stands out in a year when only two other runners ran sub-9.90.

Yet the general sentiment among track fans is that Gatlin still has more to prove—or that there will never be enough proof...that some illegal substance is not still running through his veins.

An interesting article on this subject from Let'sRun.com concluded with the following thought:

"

...He’s running better than ever at age 32—and again, he missed four years of competition because of his doping ban—but fans don’t know whether to be amazed or suspicious.

"

We should be amazed. And track and field should be proclaiming the successfully completed cycle of one of the most stringent anti-doping programs in all of sport, having come full circle for an individual athlete. After all, shouldn't the intended outcome of any doping enforcement/punishment system be the rehabilitation of the offender?

Bad things happen in sports. But if/when those things finally conclude with a good result, as in Gatlin's case, the process that worked right should be displayed for all to see.

Should Gatlin (as he, himself suggested) be exalted as a dark vigilante hero in the same mold as say, Batman? No. Hero status is reserved only for those few special athletes who achieved their goals without ever having cheated.

Should his records and medals, tainted by his unfair advantage, have been rescinded? Absolutely, and they were.

Should there be more severe penalties (permanent, lifetime bans) for more severe or repeated violations? Without question.

Should Gatlin be given credit (not sympathy) for working his way back—through the existing channels—to the elite levels of his profession after having four prime years erased from his career? Yes.

Indeed, by infusing an otherwise bland sprint landscape with a good measure of intrigue in track's so-called "off year," Gatlin has begun to repair some of the damage he's done to the sport. And it seems as if he's got the confidence and work ethic to continue that trend into 2015.

Gatlin will forever carry the scar of his self-inflicted wound. Justice, perhaps. But there should be a point where the penalty phase is finished. I think he's there.

And society itself should be encouraged. If it is true that "Sports is life, with the volume turned up*," then Gatlin has boom-boxed to the darker side in all of us that flawed humans can, and should, find ways to redemption.

* a famous quote attributed to Barry Mano

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