May 28, 2006 2 min read

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) – The much-ballyhooed 100-meter showdown next month in England between co-world record holders Justin Gatlin and Asafa Powell won’t happen, Gatlin’s agent said Saturday. Renaldo Nehemiah said there never was a contract for his client to run against Powell in the June 11 meet at Gateshead.

“We had an agreement to run there, but that agreement didn’t include Powell,” Nehemiah said.

He said he met with Gateshead meet promoter Ian Stewart in Eugene on Saturday but was unable to resolve the situation.

“Additional moneys were offered but this was more about principal,” Nehemiah said.

Stewart didn’t return a telephone message left at his hotel.

Nehemiah said he didn’t know when Gatlin and Powell would race against each other.

The two are to run in separate 100 races in the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene on Sunday. Nehemiah said he offered Stewart to run separate 100 races in Gateshead or to have Gatlin run the 200, but the meet promoter rejected the proposals.

The agent was upset that Stewart had signed Powell to run in the Gateshead meet, then spread word that it would be a race against Gatlin.

“This was all about having the first race (between Powell and Gatlin) and as momentum started to build, he like everyone else became enamored with this first-race scenario,” Nehemiah said.

Gatlin is scheduled to race at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York on June 3.

Nehemiah said that Stewart talked to Gatlin at the Penn Relays, “and my client said he’d run against anybody anywhere.”

But Nehemiah said he was in Japan at the time and that there never was a formal agreement that Gatlin would face Powell in the Gateshead meet.

Gatlin tied Powell’s world record with a 9.77-second clocking at a meet in Doha, Qatar, on May 12.

Initially, Powell was to run the 200 and Gatlin the 100 at the Prefontaine meet. But Powell decided against the 200 because he didn’t want to run the curve because of foot problems he had a year ago.

That pushed Powell into the 100, and Nehemiah said he didn’t want to Gatlin to have that kind of showdown so quickly after the world record run.