(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-29 15:28

RALEIGH, North Carolina - Banned Olympic 100 metres champion Justin Gatlin has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to rule by the end of May on his appeal against a four-year doping suspension.

US sprinter Justin Gatlin, pictured in 2006, who is appealing his doping ban in a bid to defend his Olympic 100m title, this week filed a brief with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) outlining his case. [Agencies]

The timing of the ruling is important in Gatlin's bid to compete in June's US Olympic trials for the Beijing Games.

A US arbitration panel suspended Gatlin in January for four years, ruling a 2006 positive test for the male sex hormone testosterone was a second offence.

But in a filing with CAS this week, Gatlin's attorney Maurice Suh said his client's original positive in 2001 for medication taken for Attention Deficit Disorder should not have been used to increase his punishment for the 2006 positive.

Any enhancement of the 2006 case caused by Gatlin's first positive test would constitute a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law, according to Suh.

"Our case is simple," Suh said in a statement on Thursday.

"Justin should be allowed to compete in the June (US) trials for the Beijing Olympics because the anti-doping authorities violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it sanctioned Justin in 2001 for taking attention-deficit disorder medication and later used that sanction to bar him from participating in the Olympics.

"Punishing Justin for taking medicine that was prescribed by a doctor and does not enhance performance in any way is unfair and constitutes discrimination against a person with a diagnosed disability," he added.

Had the US panel, in a split decision, not considered the 2001 test in its verdict, the American would probably have received a two-year suspension as a first-time offender.

That would have made him eligible to return to competition in May, a month before the US Olympic trials.