Organizers of Wednesday's Beijing World Challenge have denied that they kicked out Justin Gatlin from their meeting and said they were "perplexed" by the controversial sprinter's claim.
The meeting went ahead without star attraction Gatlin, who had stormed out of Beijing on Tuesday, claiming that he was ready to run the 100 meters but had been told by organizers he was not wanted.
Yet in comments to Xinhua News Agency, the meeting's organizing committee painted a very different picture on Wednesday, saying there had been "no possibility" that they would not have allowed the world's current top sprinter to compete.
"We had been preparing the event assuming Gatlin would run the race. There was no way we 'kicked out' the athlete. So we have been perplexed by what they said," Liu Jie, deputy director of the organizing committee told Xinhua, responding to the claims from Gatlin and his manager, Renaldo Nehemiah.