EUGENE, Oregon, June 2 (Reuters) – Disgraced Olympic sprint champion Justin Gatlin will remain barred from major European races despite being invited to this weekend’s Diamond League meeting in the United States, European officials told Reuters on Thursday.

Gatlin, who won the 100 metres gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics but was suspended for four years after a positive doping test in 2006, was cleared for his first major race since the ban when he was offered a spot in Saturday’s Prefontaine Classic in Oregon.

But the American’s hopes of competing in Europe appear doomed after officials said they were not planning to change their stand against inviting athletes who had served long doping terms.

“Euromeetings, the organization representing Europe’s top athletics meetings, will continue to recommend that members do not invite athletes who we believe causes disrepute to our meetings and our sport,” Rajne Soderberg, the group’s president and organiser of the Stockholm Diamond League meeting, said in an email.

Patrick Magyar, the organizer of the Zurich meet, offered a similar view.

“Eugene can invite who they want and we will do the same,” Magyar, vice chairman of the Diamond League, told Reuters via email.

Tom Jordan, the director of the Prefontaine Classic, said the 29-year-old Gatlin had been invited because he had served his penalty.

EUGENE, Oregon (Reuters) – Disgraced 2004 Olympic 100 meters champion Justin Gatlin’s comeback bid gained new life on Wednesday when he was invited to compete in Saturday’s Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting.

The 2005 world champion, still hoping to prove he can compete with the best after a four-year doping ban, will face 2008 Olympic silver medalist Richard Thompson of Trinidad and speedy Jamaicans Nesta Carter and Michael Frater, officials said.

“It is going to be competitive and it is going to be fast,” the 29-year-old told Reuters of his first major race since 2006 when he tested positive for too high a level of the male sex hormone testosterone.

“I feel honored just to be able to come and run at a prestigious meet like this at the USA mecca of track and field.”

Gatlin said his aim was to break the 10-second barrier.

His personal best is 9.85 at the Athens Olympics with a world-record tying 9.77 nullified in 2006 because of the doping ban. That still is almost two-tenths of a second off Jamaican Usain Bolt’s 2009 world record of 9.58 seconds.

“This is a totally different planet for me,” Gatlin said of Saturday’s race. “In 2006 when I was (last) competing, there was no Diamond League,” he said of the global circuit.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Big, strong and determined, American David Oliver dominated the world’s high hurdles during a perfect 2010 outdoor season but the path has not been as clear in 2011.

Chinese former world record holder Liu Xiang, employing a new starting technique, ended Oliver’s 18-meeting win streak earlier this month in Shanghai.

The performance was Liu’s finest since a 2008 injury ended the 2004 Olympic champion’s dream of a golden repeat in Beijing.

The friendly rivals will clash again on Saturday in Eugene, Oregon in one of the highlights of the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting.

Cuba’s Dayron Robles holds the world record for 110 metres hurdles at 12.87 seconds but Oliver said he believed Liu was the best.

“He is the greatest hurdler of my generation in my opinion,” the American record holder told Reuters.

“He set the world junior record, tied and then broke the world record, became the first to run under 12.90 seconds, then was injured and has come back at almost as good a level as when he left,” Oliver said via telephone from his Orlando, Florida, training camp.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – The NFL has no plans to open its financial books to the players despite frequent requests, Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

The players say the information is needed to evaluate comments by the league that its non-player costs have increased significantly.

But Goodell said that is not going to solve the labor dispute that is threatening the 2011 season for America’s most popular professional sport.

“We saw it frankly in the NBA where there were so-called ‘open books’ for the last two years and a filing earlier this week with the NLRB said there was not enough financial disclosure,” he told Tennessee Titan fans in a telephone chat on Thursday night.

Goodell was referring to an unfair labor practice charge against the NBA that the NBA Players Association filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday.

The union accused the NBA of making harsh and regressive demands, a charge the NBA denied.

Goodell said the NFL does not need to open its books for the players to have full knowledge of the economic situation of the league.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – The NFL lockout has claimed its first casualty.

The rookie symposium, an annual event to help first-year players make a smooth transition into the league, has been canceled because of the lockout, the NFL said Tuesday.

It had been scheduled for June 26 in Canton, Ohio.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in a statement that the cancellation was caused by “uncertainty of the labor issues we are facing and the logistical challenges of conducting the symposium.”

The lockout, which has been in place for most of the last 10 weeks, bans contact between teams and players, including draftees.

The NFL ordered the lockout after talks with the players’ union collapsed and the union decertified, prompting a group of high-profile players to take legal action against the league.

The players won a federal court order lifting the lockout but it was reinstated after the NFL won an appeal.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Ousted chief executive Doug Logan and USA Track and Field (USATF) have reached a settlement in his wrongful termination lawsuit against the governing body, according to court documents.

Neither Logan nor a USATF spokeswoman would comment on the filing in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis. Attorneys for both parties were not immediately available.

“The court has been advised by counsel that a settlement has been reached in this matter,” said an order with Magistrate Judge Tim Baker’s signature.

“Parties shall file a stipulation of dismissal within 30 days,” it added, giving no further details.

Logan, whose contract ran through 2013, filed his lawsuit in October after he was fired by USATF’s board the previous month.

USATF then filed a counterclaim against Logan.

The former Major League Soccer commissioner had spent an embattled two years in charge of USATF.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – NFL owners and players concluded another round of mediation talks on Tuesday without reaching an agreement on how to end the long running labor dispute that is threatening America’s most popular professional sport.

Officials, players and lawyers from both sides left the federal courthouse in Minneapolis without a resolution but agreeing to return next month to continue their court-ordered sessions.

While both sides did not reach an agreement on Tuesday, the NFL’s lead negotiator Jeff Pash said some progress had been made, offering a glimmer that hope that the 2011 season, due to start in September, may proceed on time.

“I’ve said it many times, the only way we’re going to get this accomplished is face-to-face dialogue and really digging into the issues and I think we had a good step in that direction today,” Pash told ESPN.

Their next scheduled meeting is due to take place on June 7, three days after the U.S. Court of Appeals in St Louis is due to hear arguments on the legality of the NFL lockout of players.

They also are awaiting a decision by U.S. District Judge David Doty on whether the players are entitled to damages from a $4 billion fund that the league created from the sale of television rights.

Both cases will be heard by the same panel of three judges who voted 2-1 on Monday to reinstate the league’s lockout of players.

SALVO, North Carolina (Reuters) – Athletics will suffer unless it offers more head-to-head meetings of key performers such as Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay, according to former 100 metres world record holder Asafa Powell.

“We need to have our top stars racing each other to make the sport exciting,” Jamaican Powell, who held the world mark until his compatriot Bolt began his record-breaking blitz, told Reuters via email.

“If we reserved the head-to-heads for only the major championships, nobody would care much about the rest of the meets.”

Powell will boost interest in sprinting with head-to-head meetings against both Bolt and American Gay in Diamond League races this year.

But it likely to be the Aug. 27-Sept. 4 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, before Olympic and world champion Bolt and his top challenger Gay meet.

The trio have not competed in the same race since the 2009 world championships, where Bolt set world records in both the 100 and 200 metres. Gay and Powell took silver and bronze in the 100 metres but did not contest the 200.

The world’s two fastest men met only once last year, when Gay upset Bolt in Stockholm.

SALVO, North Carolina (Reuters) – An appeals court granted the NFL’s request to put the lockout back into effect on Friday in a decision that came only hours after players across the league had returned to work.

The ruling is a temporary “administrative stay” to give the Eighth District Court of Appeals time to evaluate the league’s main request for a stay pending appeal on the injunction imposed earlier this week.

“Our attorneys will review the decision and we will advise all clubs as soon as possible on next steps,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in a statement.

The lockout began seven weeks ago after talks between the league and players over a new collective bargaining agreement broke down on March 11.

That led to a flurry of legal activity and on Monday the players succeeded in gaining an injunction from a district court to halt the lockout.

Adding to the atmosphere of chaos surrounding the league, the court’s order was issued while the NFL was carrying out the second and third rounds of their annual player draft.

While it is unlikely the stay would affect the lower rounds of the NFL’s draft planned for Saturday, it is almost certain to put a brake on any potential free agency deals.

SALVO, North Carolina (Reuters) – NFL players across the league returned to work on Friday at the same time as the league pushed for a reinstatement of the lockout.

Athletes worked out, chatted with coaches and picked up new playbooks as NFL teams began implementing rules for complying with a judge’s order to halt a lockout that came into effect seven weeks ago after collective bargaining talks broke down.

“It just feels good to come home, so to speak, and get back to football,” Selvish Capers, who was among a dozen players at the Washington Redskins facilities, told the Washington Post.

“It makes it easier to prepare for the season, being that our coaches are here and we have all the fields and equipment we need here.”

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, a plaintiff in the players’ antitrust lawsuit against the owners, told CNBC he was pleased players could return to work and also confident there would be a 2011 season.

“There are too many players and too many owners that want it,” said Brady. “There needs to be compromise.

“There are going to be a lot of talks that take place, a lot of negotiating sessions, and hopefully a lot of compromise comes from that.”