What a Concept: Clean, and No Jerk

His first track event was the 100-meter hydrants, a Brooklyn kid running down Quentin Street leaping over every fire plug in his path.

His second track event was the 100-meter spokes, the kid racing in tennis shoes against his friends riding bicycles.

A dozen years later, on a still Mediterranean night far from home, the restless boy on the block became the fastest man in the world.

If there is one track story you hope stays clean, it is Justin Gatlin’s.

If there is one kid you hope can overcome the nastiness of his sport, it is the one who won the 100-meter dash Sunday, then blew kisses to his parents, fitted his wreath on a business associate and promptly dedicated the whole shebang to his high school coach.

“Having character doesn’t mean you have to be cocky, self-serving, mean or arrogant,” he said. “There’s lots of likable people in track and field.”

His coach may not be among them, the infamous Trevor Graham having been involved with six runners who have tested positive for steroids, and then Sunday admitting he began the BALCO investigation by supplying officials with evidence.

Many other champions in his sport are also not among them, after a day when even the woman who won the shotput competition in Olympia -- historic Olympia! -- lost her gold medal because of a positive test.

There is much working against Gatlin as the 22-year-old wrests his sport’s most important crown from the rollicking head of Maurice Greene.

But working for him is, the only drug for which he’s ever tested positive is medication for his attention-deficit disorder.

He was initially suspended from competition at the University of Tennessee, but the suspension was later overturned.

“I feel I’m a genuinely clean champion,” he said, and we’ll hold him to it.

Also, instead of trash talking, Gatlin is more of a trash listener.

In the semifinals Sunday, training partner Shawn Crawford turned to him and began shouting as he won the heat and Gatlin finished second.

Said Crawford: “I was just saying, ‘C’mon, boy!’ ”

Said Gatlin, shrugging: “We do that to each other.”

Then, after winning the fastest Olympic 100 meters in history in a personal-best 9.85 seconds, Gatlin quietly listened as Greene, who finished third, announced that he was still the greatest.

“I just want to show people that, hey, I can run with a smile on my face and not worry about anything,” Gatlin said.

A smile, and an easel, as Gatlin becomes the first fastest man to have designs on designing ... prom dresses?

Said Gatlin: “That’s my first love, art and design. That’s what I’ll end up doing.”

Said his mother, Jeanette, with a nervous laugh: “Well, yes, he has wanted to design clothes of all kinds.”

There is a room in his Pensacola, Fla., house devoted to his art and none devoted to his running, but how was anyone to know?

In high school, he was going to be a football player, until the coach wouldn’t play him, so he quit the team. Luckily for America, while walking off the football field, he stepped across the school track and in front of the hurdlers.

“They asked him to join them, and he thought it looked like fun,” his father said.

None of this is as colorful, of course, as Greene’s tattoos or Crawford’s decision to once run a race wearing a “Phantom of the Opera” mask.

Unlike Greene, Gatlin doesn’t wear shoes designed like the American flag. Unlike Crawford, he doesn’t run in one black shoe and one white shoe.

Even in the 15 minutes before Sunday’s race, when the runners were inexplicably called to the Olympic Stadium track with Greek music playing and 70,000 fans clapping, Gatlin was the only runner who didn’t noticeably dance.

Then the race started, and, oh, how he did. “I’m still trying to feel how fast I ran it,” he said later. “I still can’t feel it.”

How about, so fast that Crawford ran a 9.89 that would have earned him at least a silver medal in every other Olympics in history ... yet he didn’t even get to the medal stand.

How about, so fast that when Gatlin finished, he dropped to his knees not in exhaustion, but prayer.

“The only way I’m going to know anything about this race is by watching it on TV,” he said. “It was all a blur.”

Then his victory lap was one long, slow embrace, an exercise in class and restraint, acting like everything that U.S. track and field is not.

He carried a flag, but gently wrapped it around his shoulders. He blew kisses to the crowd. He shook hands, signed autographs, even stopped to pose for a fan’s camera.

“I’m just honored, Gatlin said.

Wrong, kid. For once, it was your sport that was honored.

Now don’t mess it up.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.