Sprinter Justin Gatlin got his doping ban reduced, but not by enough to make him eligible to defend his Olympic 100-meter title this year. An arbitration panel, in a ruling released Tuesday, reduced the 25-year-old sprinter’s potential eight-year ban to four. With the ban set to expire May 24, 2010, it means Gatlin would be on the sidelines for the Beijing Olympics in August. But the panel left open the possibility of a further reduction.

The panel ruled Gatlin committed a doping offense when he tested positive for excessive testosterone in April 2006, but the sprinter’s first doping offense in 2001 troubled the group.

If that doping violation were erased, that would make Gatlin’s 2006 case his first offence, clearing the way for a further reduced ban. First doping offenses often result in a two-year ban, which would make him eligible to run in May, a month before the US Olympic trials.

“I’m a fighter and I’ve been a fighter from the very beginning and I’m going to continue to fight,” Gatlin told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “I know in my heart I haven’t done anything wrong. I have been robbed. I have been cheated of an opportunity to finish my career.”

Gatlin has six months to appeal. The panel called the circumstances surrounding Gatlin’s first offense “the real dilemma.”

As a 19-year-old competitor at the world junior championships, Gatlin tested positive for amphetamines, part of a prescribed medication he was taking for attention deficit disorder. Gatlin stopped taking the medicine a few days before the competition, but it didn’t clear his system, according to the case records. He received a two-year ban.

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