Born to run

In his mother’s womb, he was always moving. His mother would tell her husband about it when he came back from work that she was always tired and very much ready for the child to be born because it seemed like the child was running, writes Manish Kumar.

Justin Alexander Gatlin, one of the two fastest men on earth (Asafa Powell of Jamaica is the other) — a clock snag betrayed him in the race that took place in Doha on May 12 — took to the sport of track and field just by chance.

Gatlin, who is also the world champion and winner of the Olympic gold medal in 100 metres, had originally hoped to take up art or fashion designing as a career. Imagine the situation — the only athlete to earn $500000 through running a single race etching with charcoal.

But, running was, Gatlin claims, something he was born to do and a niche that had eluded him for quite some time when he tried different things like art designing, playing saxophone, piano, basketball and eventually football, which he was pretty good at but bad vibes with his coach disillusioned him from football and led him to sprinting by chance. A disappointed Gatlin happened to be walking near his school’s playing ground and he noticed the school’s track team warming up on the 110m high hurdles. It aroused his curiosity and he went up to the track coach and told him that he wanted to join the team. It was Gatlin’s first competitive event and he still won it easily. His picture appeared in the local newspaper and the young Gatlin went home beaming, telling his father that he had finally found his niche in life.

Later, Gatlin realised that both his parents, father Willie and mother Jeanette Alexander Gatlin, gave him the freedom to choose his dream as he was the youngest among their four children. His father spent 26 years in the US Army, retired as Sergeant First Class and his mom had a successful career in fashion design and advertisement with one of the world’s largest publishing companies, Conda Nast. “It was agreed since I was the last to be reared. I would get all the attention to find what would be my niche,” Gatlin writes in his official website.

Gatlin was born on February 10, 1982 in Victory Memorial Hospital Brooklyn, New York. He acquired his first name, Justin from his mother because he had arrived into the world ‘Just-in-time’. His parents have interesting anecdotes of the time when the future Olympic champion was about to be born. He was very active in his mother’s womb, never still and always moving. Jeanette would tell her husband about it when he came back from work that she was always tired and very much ready for the child to be born because it seemed like the child was running.

Not surprisingly, Gatlin says now, “I was born to run.”

In childhood his liking for sports depended much on speed. Gatlin gave up baseball, America’s mascot game, “as it was too slow and he hated for the ball to come to him.”
Gatlin’s early years were spent in Fort Hamilton, New York, in military housing on Sheepshead Bay, where he began running and jumping fire hydrants, racing his friends on foot while they were on their bicycles. The speed gap between Gatlin and the rest was apparent even then and it has only been increasing over the years.

Currently, he enjoys an edge over his arch-rival Powell as Gatlin is the owner of both the world championship and Olympic titles and his next goal is to clock the fastest race. It seems possible for Gatlin, as he seems to relish pushing himself to the limit.

Just-in facts:

• Gatlin set the world record of 9.76 secs at the Qatar Super Grand Prix in Doha on May 12, 2006 but a technical error in the clock reverted the timing to 9.77 secs as joint world-record holder
• His winning time in the 2004 Olympics (9.85secs) is the second fastest timing in Olympic history to Canadian Donovan Bailey’s 9.84 at the 1996 Olympics
• If Gatlin wasn’t in track, he would have been designing clothes
• He is paid $500000 per race appearance