AFP, Doha :
Christian Coleman arrives at the World Championships as the heavy favourite for 100m gold after an impressive season that has seen him clock a world-leading 9.81sec.
But while the 23-year-old has left most of his rivals trailing firmly in his slipstream this year, he may find sceptics harder to shake off.
In the eyes of many, Coleman, the 2017 World Championships silver medallist over 100m, is extremely fortunate to even be competing in Doha.
In August, the athletics world was rocked by news that Coleman had registered three drug-testing “whereabouts” failures in a 12-month period – an offence usually regarded as equivalent to a failed drug test and followed by a ban of up to two years.
Yet with Coleman facing the very real possibility of a suspension that would have barred him from competing at the World Championships and next year’s Olympics, the case collapsed this month because of a technicality. At first glance, it appeared to be an open and shut case.
Coleman had recorded his first whereabouts failure on June 6 last year, before two more offences in January 16 and April 26 this year.
However the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) abruptly withdrew the charges against Coleman on September 2 after a review of the rules regarding how the 12-month window should be calculated.
Under an obscure regulation in the International Standard for Testing and Investigations (ISTI) guidelines, Coleman’s first missed case in June last year should have been backdated to the first day of that quarter, making the formal date of the first offence April 1, 2018.
