Justin Gatlin - File
RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters)
Olympic champion Justin Gatlin's attorney said yester-day she expected a doping review panel to consider his positive drugs' test this week.
"Sometime this week but I am not sure exactly when," Cameron Myler told Reuters via telephone from her New York office.
The panel, which usually consists of three to five members, will review written submissions by Gatlin's legal team, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and the sprinter's test results.
It will then confer, often by telephone, and make a rec-ommendation to USADA on whether there is a case against the joint 100 metres world record holder.
"There is no hearing," Myler said, emphasising neither she nor Gatlin would appear before the panel.
Gatlin announced on July 29 he had tested positive for the male sex hormone testosterone or its precursors.
He said in the statement he did not know how the positive test occurred and that he had never knowingly used any banned substance.
He faces a life ban because this would be his second doping offence.
EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES
Myler said Gatlin's legal team would use the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) exceptional circumstances provision in seeking to have the case against Gatlin dismissed.
The provision permits USADA and WADA to void charges or reduce sanctions against an athlete if it can be proven the athlete bears no fault or negligence for the violation.
But the WADA rule requires the athlete to establish how the prohibited substance entered his or her body.
Asked if Gatlin's legal team had found an exceptional circumstance for his positive test, Myler replied: "We are working on establishing that theory.
"There certainly are some cases out there in which CAS (the Court of Arbitration for Sport) or an AAA (American Arbitration Association) panel has found there are exceptional circumstances."
WADA chief Dick Pound told Reuters that how the provision could be used depended on the circumstances.
"It is very hard to know in advance what evidence will come forward and what the penalty might be," he said via telephone from his Montreal office.
Once the review panel makes its recommendation, USADA will decide whether Gatlin should be charged with a doping offence.
If charged, the athlete would have an opportunity to contest the USADA decision and recommended sanction before, first, a U.S. panel of judges and then a panel of international judges from CAS.
Myler would not reveal the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio in Gatlin's samples or say whether the ratio in his A sample would have caused a positive test.
A testosterone-epitestosterone ratio above 4-1 or a positive carbon isotope result can be used as evidence of doping.
Myler said last week that a carbon isotope test had been performed on Gatlin's sample from the April 22 Kansas Relays.
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