Date:01/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/01/stories/2008030159802400.htm

Sport - Athletics

Gatlin seeks verdict by May

RALEIGH: Banned Olympic 100m champion Justin Gatlin has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to rule by the end of May on his appeal against a four-year doping suspension.

The timing of the ruling is important in Gatlin’s bid to compete in June’s U.S. Olympic trials for the Beijing Games.

A U.S. arbitration panel suspended Gatlin in January for four years, ruling a 2006 positive test for the male sex hormone testosterone was a second offence.

But in a filing with CAS this week, Gatlin’s attorney Maurice Suh said his client’s original positive in 2001 for medication taken for Attention Deficit Disorder should not have been used to increase his punishment for the 2006 positive. — Reuters