Justin Gatlin, meet Usain Bolt

As usual, your analysis is way off. Gatlin didn't run poorly over the second half of his London 100m. He simply couldn't handle Usain's speed. 9.79 is no choke.

I never said he ran "poorly" over the second half.

Gatlin ran pretty much as well as everyone not named Bolt.

Which puts him squarely into the "also-ran" category.

Hence the title of this thread. Bolt is really the only thing that Gatlin hasn't seen. He was prepared well for any challenge he could conceive, but not for Bolt.

No sprinter near the top wants to be in the also-ran category.

Next year, with Blake coming on and with Gay getting healthy, Gatlin will be in the "not competitive with the best" category, unless he improves.

Fascinating. He has improved every year in his comeback. This guy seems to be durable, he seems to find a way, but I don't think he'll be able to do it.

Did you see Ryan Bailey massively gaining on Gatlin in the second half of the race? Speaking of which, what will Bailey do in the 200 next year, with that kind of top-end?

With R. Bailey gaining on Gatlin, Gatlin can hardly be said to have had an excellent second half.

Remember this interview of Bolt brushing off Gatlin's comments?

"I think he has a few guys to get past to be worrying about me".

Also, very prophetic...

"Even if I lose every race leading up to the Olympics, it won't even bother me because I know that I have one focus. That's to go to the Olympics and do great things."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3cKABtXKsc

Or the old... "Gatlin spat across my lane"

http://www.trackalerts.com/index.php/news/lead-stories/7068-bolt-tells-linford-christie-justin-gatlin-spat-across-my-lane

Ventolin`3 wrote:

I was so MAD :@ when Gay didn't just lean, he even laid back a little... and got beat by 0,01... Gatilin doesn't deserve to be an Olympian again... Ok go run and try to make a living running in Diamond circuit etc. but Olympics aren't for cheats...

The real ventolin would never post anything against a doper.

Gatlin did his time, and he is still great and it pisses people off

He is almost 30 and is still running at the top of the world.

Go rip apart every other dirty record and guy, because none of those marks 1500 and above are clean, not one

People hate on Gatlin , worship Lagat

People hate on Gatlin, Love Bekele, El G, all these ridiculously dirty makers of marks that do not even look right today

I do not get the hypocrisy

He is 30 and his Olympic career is over and he knows it. He will never be the best in the world again and has no motivation to anything except maybe to run for money.

Gatlin's a guy who ran 9.77 "doped" and 9.79 "clean", so the way I look at it Gatlin and Powell are basically maxed out and relegated to checking out the spikes of the 3 guys in front.

If you're going to try to compete with Bolt in the second half:

(1) Grow longer legs. Lacking Pistorius blades, this isn't an option. BTW, since the powers that be decided that the blades were not an advantage, what exactly would they do if a healthy sprinter "sprouted" them?

(2) Greater turnover. This is Gay's territory. If you're Gatlin, and you've spent your career as "the long strider," you are probably not going to want to chop that stride to get greater turnover. Gay would probably have a better shot with weights/plyos/contrast to increase the stide a bit with the same turnover rate.

(3) More power. Push more power into the track, Blake-style. Go back and talk to his old coach Vince Anderson who, like Tellez, believes in pushing. Might require some of the same kind of (ahem) vitamins that Blake has at his disposal, but remember that Gatlin's coach is Dennis Mitchell....

For someone who has a start to not just rival but surpass Asafa (remember who the world indoor champion is), one more option is to throw caution to the wind, hammer from the first step, and hope you can hang on. Push more force into the track, get in front, and hope that he can't catch you.

Really? is it that big a deal losing to Usain Bolt?

Trialswatcher wrote:

Gatlin did his time, and he is still great and it pisses people off

He is almost 30 and is still running at the top of the world.

Go rip apart every other dirty record and guy, because none of those marks 1500 and above are clean, not one

People hate on Gatlin , worship Lagat

People hate on Gatlin, Love Bekele, El G, all these ridiculously dirty makers of marks that do not even look right today

I do not get the hypocrisy

Hypocrisy? There is no hypocrisy. El G and Lagat get torn apart all the time on these boards. Bekele, to a lesser extent, also gets accused of PEDs often. Hell, even golden boy Rupp gets accusations.

Sprint Geezer, what is it you have against Justin Gatlin? If everyone in the top 4 of that olympic final is on drugs then why do you resent Gatlin so much?

I find Gatlin's comeback nothing short of remarkable. But i always knew he was a gamer when it mattered. He won NCAA's as a freshman in the 100 and the 200. Nothing scares this man.

I find it funny though, that he ran a race similiar to 2004 Athens 100m final. He stayed down in his drive phase and got out ahead of the field and tried to hang on.

Only this time, this final had Jamaicans doped to the gills who seemingly had infinite speed endurance compared to Gatlin. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Gatlin is clean. He runs too perfect to not be. He does everything right in championship races and that 9.79 in London was as good as it gets clean. The best, most honest race i've ever seen.

No blowing past people the last 40m as if they were standing still (ahem Bolt). Just a clean run at 9.79

Can't take away anything from Gatlin with regard to his ability and form. The thing I dislike most about him, aside from his doping history, was his arrogance while he was doping. It didn't get any better after his suspension. You'd think that after a four year ban, he would come back, stay humble and just win races to rebuild his rep. But no, he was talking smack about beating Bolt not knowing how out of his league he was. This is why people loved to see when he got smoked by Bolt and Blake. Seriously speaking, no one can truly down the Jamaicans when Gatlin is the best the USA has running - A very bad spokesman of sprint.

Whaaat? wrote:

Can't take away anything from Gatlin with regard to his ability and form. The thing I dislike most about him, aside from his doping history, was his arrogance while he was doping. It didn't get any better after his suspension. You'd think that after a four year ban, he would come back, stay humble and just win races to rebuild his rep. But no, he was talking smack about beating Bolt not knowing how out of his league he was. This is why people loved to see when he got smoked by Bolt and Blake. Seriously speaking, no one can truly down the Jamaicans when Gatlin is the best the USA has running - A very bad spokesman of sprint.

I dunno....you see it as arrogance but i see it as fighting words. Tyson Gay is TOO humble. "Maybe i'll win... i think.... i might.." blah blah all things he says. While a certain amount is respectable he's just not a guy that comes across as confident. Which is why there's no hype when he runs against Asafa, or Blake. If Gatlin ran against those two THEN there would be hype because Gatlin would exude some "arrogance" to get fans rallied up and wanting to see the race.

I think Gatlin and Bolt are great for our sport. They know how to get people interested. Of course, this takes cockiness. I would watch Gatlin vs Bolt anyday over Tyson vs Bolt simply because Tyson would already admit defeat in his pre race interviews while Gatlin would talk smack.

master--

I don't have anything against Gatlin.

I was just trying to point out that he really needs to change his top-end if he wants to be competitive with the best.

Like you said, he is still running his 2004 race model, which is obviously obsolete.

The thing is, I think he has incredible talent. Obviously he's got the power. And I think he's got a great body for sprinting, possibly the best I've seen since Donovan Bailey. His legs are actually quite long, huge in the quads and core, thin in the calves. He's muscular where it counts up top, big guns, not carrying around huge lats.

Gatlin is definitely a power runner, and runs by feel. Look at the vid I linked to in that other thread. If he could learn to transition to foot speed in the second half of the race, while maintaining his first half, he could legitimately challenge Bolt, which is an amazing thing to say.

Also, Gay could challenge Bolt. At low-9.7x with his start, he could be low-9.6x with a really good start, assuming he can regain all of his prior fitness.

I know what Gatlin's trying to do when he's running, and I know that it will be killer as far as a 60m is concerned--but it's just no an efficient way to try to maintain foot speed for the required number of cycles between 60 and 100m.

Given the uniquely extreme nature of Gatlin's current long-striding top-end form, it would appear truly radical to see Gatlin change it to a more conventional form, like Bolt or Gay. It would be the most visible change any of these guys could make.

I hope he does it. If he is serious about winning, he will. It is the only way he can be competitive, his 2004 form just won't cut it going forward.

Copied this from another thread a while back...

IIRC that was Shawn Crawford.

Umm.... remember BERLIN 2009 when TRAINING PARTNERS Usain Bolt and Daniel Bailey looking at each other and laughing as they crossed the line in the quarter finals?

And how can you even compared let alone root for the man with the greatest display of arrogance of ALL TIME (even moreso then Maurice Greene's fire extinguisher act)

Yes, i'm talking about Bolt's 9.69 looking back and arms wide open in victory 20m before the line in the Olympic final. What a way to humiliate the other athletes when he KNOWS he's doped to the gills.

The thing about Gatlin's drug test is he never tested positive for a DRUG. He only tested positive for excessive testosterone thus making his story of a vengeful masseuse completely rationale. And he tested positive twice that same year, obviously the masseuse wouldn't only try once to sabotage Gatlin.

Gatlin even lost that race to Shawn Crawford. And he wasn't laughing and he didn't give him a high five.

My god, the race is all over youtube go find it before you give people your tainted facts from a bias memory. Gatlin merely seemed ecstatic that he was in the finals, while Crawford was the one who beckoned for Gatlin to hurry up (he was the arrogant one there).

Yes, it was a semi in Athens 2004:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBGSFsQZBY

BTW, the best thing about Athens was that the pot beat the kettle in the final.

BM... I just watched it again (thanks, Geezer) and it had the same effect.

Tainted biased memory? You'd accuse Bolt, who has never tested positive for anything of being "doped to the gills", then defend a cheat, who was banned for four years?

"The thing about Gatlin's drug test is he never tested positive for a DRUG. He only tested positive for excessive testosterone thus making his story of a vengeful masseuse completely rationale."

So he never tested for a drug, but it was the masseuse's fault? Do you even listen to yourself? What was the masseuse doing to raise his hormone level then...jacking him off or nibbling on his anus? Testosterone is not only a hormone, it's an ANABOLIC STEROID and he tried to make the masseuse a fall guy. And it wasn't a high-five, it was a low-five.

Talk about biased... you're full of crap. BM = bowel movement