EUGENE — Justin Gatlin’s pursuit of Olympic gold in Beijing is really over now. His fight against the powers that banned him from the games — well, that will be more like a marathon than a sprint.

The defending Olympic 100-meter champion lost his appeal Thursday to run in the U.S. Olympic track trials and said he will not take the case to the Supreme Court, meaning there are no more back doors or last-second maneuvers that could land him in China in six weeks.

But he will continue to seek monetary and other damages from the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and other defendants, saying they discriminated against him because his first doping violation, in 2001, was for taking prescribed medication to treat attention deficit disorder.

Because that penalty was on the books, his second violation in 2006 triggered the suspension that has barred him from Beijing.

Earlier this month, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld that ban.

In the lawsuit, Gatlin said banning him from Olympic trials violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gatlin claims he has never intentionally doped.

“Justin was disappointed, but he felt relieved in a way, because the court had finally acknowledged the fact he had a disability,” said Gatlin’s attorney, Joe Zarzaur. “The judge made it very clear that they were the party at fault, not him.”

Indeed, in the most strongly worded portion of an order that actually went against Gatlin, U.S. District Judge Lacey Collier chided the USOC and USADA.

“The basic argument from these defendants is that they are not interested in fairness for Mr. Gatlin; they are interested only in their rules,” Collier wrote.

Still, Collier said his court did not have the jurisdiction to rule on a case involving how the USOC chooses members of its Olympic team. A federal appeals court in Atlanta agreed in an emergency ruling of its own Thursday.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Gatlin hasn’t shown he meets the “applicable standard for such an injunction.”

The USOC welcomed the end of this phase of the Gatlin saga. Spokesman Darryl Seibel said the federation would never hesitate to leave behind athletes who could win medals if it meant ensuring clean competition.

“Two U.S. courts have reaffirmed the jurisdiction and authority of CAS and, with respect to athlete eligibility, the USOC,” Seibel said. “In our view, this matter is closed.”

Tyson Gay, who essentially replaced Gatlin as America’s top sprinting star, greeted the news with a sense of relief — not so much because he feared racing Gatlin, but because of the spectacle his presence would have generated.

“I think it’s good for the sport in general — not just for America, not just for our trials,” Gay said in Eugene, where he was preparing for trials. “It shows that USA Track and Field and everyone is standing up and sticking to their guns.”

Before the decision became known, Allyson Felix said she wasn’t enthusiastic about Gatlin’s possible appearance.

“When I look at it from just not a personal standpoint and just purely athletically, I think it would be a distraction,” said Felix, a friend of Gatlin’s. “Obviously, I think he would be a focus of a lot of things, and that focus would be on drug-related things and I think that’s definitely what we’re trying to get away from here.”

In a brief filed in district court Thursday before the decision was reached, track’s governing body (IAAF) took a strong stance against Gatlin. In the hearing before CAS, the IAAF fought to restore Gatlin’s ban to eight years instead of the reduced four-year penalty that had been agreed to in earlier negotiations.

“The IAAF cannot overstate its concern that the credibility of the worldwide doping enforcement procedures is undermined when cheating athletes are perceived to have ‘beaten the system,”’ lawyers wrote in their motion.

In the system, athletes usually get to appeal through arbitration, first via a process in their own country, then through CAS. The CAS decision is considered final and binding, with a lawsuit filed at the Swiss Federal Tribunal the only possible legal challenge. Gatlin didn’t choose that route.

Like many critics of the system, Zarzaur said he didn’t think athletes get a fair shake in arbitration hearings.

“Arbitration is a fraud,” he said. “It is not fair, and that’s what Justin lost to today, arbitration.”