JUSTIN GATLIN has admitted committing a doping offence and agreed to an eight-year ban from the sport, it was announced last night. Gatlin, the Olympic and world 100 metres champion, will be stripped of his share of the world record, which returns to the sole possession of Asafa Powell, the Jamaican who has run 9.77sec three times.

However, Gatlin, who had been facing a life ban, can appeal in the next six months against the length of his suspension. Michelle Collins, a fellow American sprinter, succeeded last year in having an eight-year ban for a doping offence reduced to four, although her circumstances were different.

Should Gatlin’s ban stand at eight years, his career would effectively be over. He would be 32 upon his return and although Linford Christie won the 1992 Olympic title at that age, of all the sprinters who have returned after being banned for taking drugs, none has made a successful comeback.

Gatlin has avoided a life ban for a second violation by agreeing to co-operate with anti-doping authorities and because of the “exceptional circumstances” surrounding his first positive test in 2001. On that occasion he tested positive for amphetamine, but his two-year ban was reduced when it was accepted that the drug was contained in prescribed medication to treat attention deficit disorder.

A second offence carries a life ban and last month, Gatlin announced that he had tested positive for testosterone. While Trevor Graham, Gatlin’s coach, said that it had entered his system through cream used by a masseur seeking revenge, the athlete and his legal team distanced themselves from that claim.

Gatlin has said that he did not know how steroids got into his system. In reaching an agreement with the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Gatlin cannot argue that the test was faulty. “To his credit, it is recognition that the science is reliable,” Travis Tygart, the USADA legal spokesman, said.

This latest twist came only two days after Marion Jones, the winner of three gold medals at the 2000 Olympics, returned an adverse finding for erythropoietin and is facing a two-year ban. Collins forfeited her 2003 world indoor 200 metres title and was suspended for eight years by the USADA, even though she never tested positive. Her ban was halved when she agreed to drop her appeal.