Dave Kidd: Justin Gatlin beating Usain Bolt to World gold is no nightmare… it is exactly the reminder athletics needed

A NIGHTMARE result for the future of athletics?

No, when Justin Gatlin defeated Usain Bolt in the 100 metres final at the World Championships it might have been the best outcome for the long-term wellbeing of this drug-addled sport.

When the climax of your blue-riband event is met with a deathly silence, swiftly followed by massed booing, it must surely be a wake-up call for a sport blighted by complacency and a culture of denial.

Athletics has used the charisma, apparent cleanness and huge popularity of Bolt, 30, to shield itself from such public dissent for the past decade.

Now there is no place left to hide.

IAAF president Seb Coe last week claimed that doping was NOT the greatest problem facing athletics. It was a delusional comment.

Doping has cast an immense shadow over track-and-field for three decades now.

And while the London crowd were right to boo Gatlin, it is not the answer to demonise one individual.

Dozens of competitors at these championships are convicted drug cheats. Gatlin is little more than a scapegoat, albeit a guilty and brazen one.

Coe rightly points out that the IAAF attempted to issue Gatlin with an effective life ban after his SECOND offence but their hands were tied.

But when a sport is led by a man so publicly dismissive of the threat of doping and when it  is populated by too many suits desperate to stifle awkward questioning, there  is little prospect of affecting change.

Organisers did alter the timing of Gatlin’s medal ceremony yesterday, shifting it away from prime time to avoid more jeering spectators.

If those in charge of athletics are suffering from shame, then that feeling is well-earned.

And perhaps such world-wide embarrassment will jolt them into staging a genuine all-out war on doping.