Once upon a time, Justin Gatlin broke the 100 meter world record by 1/100th of a second. It was then determined that his time was actually 9.766 seconds, which meant that his officially recorded time was equal to the world record of 9.77 seconds at that time.
His time was later annulled when he received a 4 year ban from track and field for using performance enhancing drugs.
This was Justin’s second ban, as he hadn’t paid enough attention to the rules when he was in college when it was discovered that medication he’d been taking since childhood was not allowed.
Due to the extenuating cirumstances of that first ban, he received a 4 year ban from the sport that started in 2006 rather than receiving a lifetime ban.
Now, he’s back.
He isn’t quite as fast as he was 4 years ago, but after 3 races he’s now notched 3 wins. He began his racing in Estonia, where he won in 10.24 seconds on August 3rd and in 10.17 seconds on August 8th.
Now, he has moved on to Finland, where his qualifying heat time of 10.19 seconds was a precursor to his winning time of 10.28 into a 2 meter per second headwind, winning the race by 0.12 seconds over Rubin Williams.
It will be interesting to see how well he can improve now that he is 4 years older, although from the looks of things he doesn’t seem to have lost much from his competitive edge.
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