Track's biggest stars will always be hounded by doubt

	Justin Gatlin's eight-year suspension is still being felt by the sport. Kirby Lee/WireImage.com
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INDIANAPOLIS -- It is a fact of life in modern track and field that major events are defined as much by the athletes who are absent as by those who are present. This is the unfortunate reality that attends a sport where euphoria is attended by suspicion and fans are advised to embrace a primal and terrific game with great caution, lest they be burned for loving too much.

This weekend the USA Track and Field national championships take place in Indianapolis, the otherwise unremarkable setting where the late Florence Griffith Joyner burst into greatness at the 1988 Olympic Trials and where, nine years later, Marion Jones and Maurice Greene launched professional careers that would make history.

The championships were here last June, as well, and that seems a distant time. Consider three athletes: Justin Gatlin was here a year ago, the unquestioned king of American track and field, the role model for a clean sport and the fastest man alive. Jones was here, too, staging a solid comeback in the face of endless innuendo regarding the source of her former greatness. Torri Edwards was here, carving out a comeback of her own after a doping suspension that kept her out of the 2004 Olympic Games.

Twelve months have passed. Gatlin is not here. Nor is Jones. Edwards is back, and better than ever. Together their stories narrate the arc of their sport.

Gatlin rode into Indianapolis last June on the heels of equaling Asafa Powell's world record of 9.77 seconds at an April meet in Qatar. More than this, he was regarded as such an example of all that can be good in track and field (smart, drug-free, talented), that his association with notorious coach Trevor Graham was overlooked by many. That all changed in late July, when it was announced that Gatlin had tested positive for a form of testosterone. He was eventually suspended for eight years and at the end of July will appeal to the Court of Arbritration for Sport to have that term shortened, probably on the grounds that he was sabotaged.

Gatlin's expulsion -- for whatever term -- cut a wide swath through the sport, a body blow to USATF's so-called new generation of runners who would leave behind the detritus of BALCO.

No one was hurt more deeply, or left in a more awkward position, than reigning 200-meter world champion Allyson Felix, 21, who is Gatlin's close friend. (Fifteen months ago, I interviewed Gatlin and Felix together at a hotel in Minneapolis, where they had done a USATF charity appearance. They sat side-by-side and finished each others' sentences, while assuring that they were not a couple. Gatlin talked openly -- and ominously -- about how he could literally bring down the sport if he tested positive, and boy, was he close on that one).

It was Gatlin who called Felix last year to tell her about his positive test. "Pretty astonishing," Felix said yesterday in Indianapolis. "It was definitely a big personal blow to me. I'm still his friend. I'm always going to be his friend. But our friendship is a little different, now. I can't, you know, support the guy."

Tyson Gay, 24, has emerged as the new threat to Powell in the 100 meters and one of several U.S. 200-meter runners who are dipping toward territory previously trod upon only by Michael Johnson. A year ago, Gay finished second to Gatlin in the national 100 meters.

Then at an August meet in Zurich, a coach approached Gay and congratulated him on being elevated to national champion. "I didn't even realize it," says Gay. "As far as Justin Gatlin testing positive, I was more surprised than anything else. Then it crossed my mind that he beat me and it made me a little proud that he probably beat me with his situation [read: because he was dirty] and I felt proud of what I was able to accomplish."