'Was I done out of a medal, or even fourth, or fifth? Have I been robbed of something?'

After processing the mild surprise and nagging disgust that both Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell had failed a doping test – the latest damning indictment on the sport, yet neither of whom he'd any reason to doubt – there was only one thing David Gillick felt like doing.

So he drove the short distance up to Marley Park, ran repeat hills next to the playground, and followed that with a weights session in the GAA clubhouse at nearby Ballinteer St John’s.

This was his old stomping ground, where Gillick first dreamed of running on the world stage, of standing on the medal podium to the tune of Amhrán na bhFiann. It was here Gillick took the first strides towards fulfilling that dream, which within a few years saw him win two European Indoor gold medals in the 400 metres, and run that still brilliant Irish record of 44.77 seconds.

It was here, he told me, that the mild surprise and nagging disgust turned to anger, and why now more than ever, Gillick feels the sport he still loves is being allowed to die.

Sad part
He's not alone; to anyone else who still cares in that way – and we're dying out ourselves – this is the sad part of what Gay and Powell have again revealed, that the sport still has the appetite for destruction, while its credibility drops dangerously close to zero.

Gillick has had his critics over the years, not always delivering on the big stage, but it’s never been through lack of effort. In 2009 he made the final of the World Championships in Berlin, finished an excellent sixth, as the American LaShawn Merritt cruised to the gold medal. A year later Merritt failed a doping test, and blamed it on a penis enlargement product, “ExtenZe”. His standard two-year ban was later reduced to 21 months, just in time for Merritt to be back competing at the London Olympics.

Gillick, in the meantime, after narrowly missing out on a medal at the 2010 European Championships in Barcelona, decided he needed to change something to step up to the next level. So he talked his way into one of the leading sprint training groups in the world, and moved to Clermont, Florida to join Gay, his coach Lance Brauman, and some of the other top names in the sport. Yet in trying, ultimately, to match these so-called Fastest Men on Earth, Gillick fell further behind, that being the very reason why doping still makes the crucial difference, and why as long as the penalty doesn’t fit the crime, will continue to do so.

“Yeah, I tried to stick with that, and for a while I did,” says Gillick. “Then I got as far as February and I tore my calf muscle, broke down completely. That’s when I started to question the intensity that these guys were training at, knocking it out, week after week. At that time Tyson Gay had a few injury problems, too. He would hop on a plane, go away for a week or two, then come back flying again.

“At the time it was hard to know what to imply by that, but in hindsight, it makes perfect sense now.

“Now I never saw anyone doping, or was never bluntly offered anything, because this kind of stuff doesn’t go on down at the track. It’s done in their own apartments, houses, wherever. But that’s what performance enhancing drugs are about, allowing athletes to train hard the whole year round, unlike us mere mortals.

“That’s what’s really hitting me, wondering how many of these athletes that actually beat me were taking drugs? That’s the hardest part. Was I done out of a medal, or even fourth, or fifth? Have I been robbed of something?”

That’s the equally sad part of the Gay and Powell affair, that they’re not only cheating themselves but the whole sport and everyone in it.

What typically separates the cheats from those being cheated, however, is the level of noise and uproar about both the testing process and the process that follows: there are those who remain suspiciously quiet.

“I know the lifetime ban won’t happen, for legal reasons or whatever. But there’s no reason they can’t make it a four-year ban. That’s at least is an Olympic cycle. And when an athlete sees one of their closest rivals get done there should be more noise. I’m not hearing enough of that noise.”