Gabby Thomas’ summer ended before it ever began. Just a year after her Paris Olympics victory, at one of the most crucial points of her career, a stubborn Achilles injury forced her to watch the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo from the sidelines. Yet while her body has been on pause, her voice has not. In recent weeks, Thomas has been speaking candidly online, not just about the challenges of recovery, but about her strong opinions on doping and the culture surrounding it. And yet again, a recent post from Gabby stirred up a conversation that Gabby did not intend on feeding fodder to. 

In July, just after struggling through US Trials where she finished third in 22.20 seconds, Thomas took to Instagram and made her feelings glaringly known. “Doping coaches should be banned for life from coaching in the sport. Whether you were banned while competing as an athlete or caught distributing as a coach [for some, both],” she wrote. She went further, adding, “Idc idc idc … If you train under a coach who is known for doping … you are complicit.” And now just days after this chaos, Thomas’ recent X update has again created a buzz.

The topic resurfaced again this month. On X, Gabby Thomas posted a light-hearted remark, “Does anybody else get excited about going to get their blood testing done? And looking at their results? Just me? Okay cool 😂.” Immediately, netizens speculated that she was yet again alluding to the doping thread. However, as it appears from Gabby’s next post, she was seemingly just trying to go back to the old days. Hours later she clarified, writing, “Just good ol’ routine blood testing guys. Not anti doping. Routine testing is also a part of being an athlete.” After all that happened last month, for Thomas at the moment, even a casual update can be misinterpreted against the backdrop of her outspoken record.

Weeks ago, her forthrightness prompted her to revisit her own history with anti-doping systems. In a nine-minute TikTok, Thomas explained how, as a Harvard student in 2018, she was provisionally suspended after three whereabouts failures. “I was never banned. I never committed any type of anti-doping violation,” she said. She recounted missed tests ranging from leaving a movie theater only to find the tester gone, to a doping officer screenshotting her Instagram story at a Thai restaurant, to a knock at her boyfriend’s dorm that was never audible.

At the time, she admitted, she did not fully grasp the magnanimity. “I thought nothing of it. I didn’t dispute it. I didn’t realize how serious this anti-doping stuff in track and field was.” Since then, she stressed, she has taken the process with full seriousness, adding, “It doesn’t matter where I am, what city I’m in, if I’m out at a club, it doesn’t matter. I’ve never missed one.”

After these conversations on her social media handles, now even when she jokes about blood tests, the conversation always seems to circle back to the same subject. But amid this, another US track legend had a different opinion to share about Thomas’ insistence on clean sport this season.

Does the track legend think that Gabby Thomas spoke too soon?

Justin Gatlin did not disguise his irritation with Gabby Thomas after her comments regarding coaches with doping histories. On the Ready Set Go podcast, he stated plainly, “You know, everyone has their story, everyone has their journeys. When you look at the fact of it’s the timing aspect for me, like if you said this after you won your gold in 2024, people would receive it different.” Gatlin, although he expressed no judgment regarding her sharing her opinion, he stated how he felt that her remarks were poorly timed.

Gatlin continued by adding, “I think it would have been better for her to just to be silent right now, work through it. And if you’re frustrated, if you didn’t go out here and win the world championships, speak your mind then.” Thomas had recently finished behind Melissa Jefferson-Wooden in multiple races. Hinting at the same the track legend said, “it makes it look like you’re taking shots at someone like a Melissa.” Jefferson-Wooden’s undefeated run in the 100 meters and her victories over Thomas in the 200 meters at the Grand Slam Track meet and the US Championships must have added fuel to his thoughts.

Gatlin explained his take on the wrong timing. “And I feel like you should have took a stance when you had the opportunity and you hold the golden coin in your hand. Right now, you don’t hold that golden coin,” he said, alluding to Thomas’s Paris triumph a year earlier. Instead, he believed her words might have seemed like a targeted criticism during a campaign dominated by the nation’s fastest woman.