Five years after he won the 100 meters in the Prefontaine Classic for the second straight year, sprinter Justin Gatlin will be back in the meet Saturday at Hayward Field.

Behind him is a four-year suspension for doping, a positive drug test that Gatlin still maintains was caused when his massage therapist, Eugene resident Chris Whetstine, rubbed a testosterone-like cream onto his legs in the spring of 2006.

Whetstine denied the charges, and since then Gatlin’s coach at the time, Trevor Graham, and several other athletes from their training group, including Marion Jones, have been banned from the sport in the aftermath of the BALCO steroids investigation.

Wednesday, the 29-year-old Gatlin was almost a footnote in the sprint fields announced by meet director Tom Jordan, who once built entire meets around the sprinter, ranked No. 1 in the world in the 100 and 200 in 2005 by Track & Field News.

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