Greece’s Athletes and Doping at Beijing 2008
Posted by evdomada on August 18, 2008
Greece’s involvement in the 2008 Beijing Olympics has not been its best.
The weightlifting team was disqualified weeks before the games, another athlete sprinter Tasos Gousis was caught the week before we started … Katerina Thanou was not allowed to participate even though she has served her “sentence”.
And the latest, on the day we finally win a few medals, one of our main medal hopes Fani Halkia who won gold in Athens in the 400m hurdles, gets caught with a doping test.
Fani was tested in Japan where the Greek team was warming up prior to arriving in Beijing.
What’s strange about this story is that Fani Halkia is a volunteer in the WADA’s anti-doping testing scheme.
This is an excerpt from the Canberra Times online edition (source) ..
“‘I am shocked,” she said yesterday morning. ”I have undergone more testing than anyone else.”
Halkia, 29, was tested a few days before the Beijing Olympics in Japan, where Greece’s track and field team had been training.
She said she had volunteered to take part in the agency’s pilot program in which athletes submitted themselves voluntarily to regular testing.
Halkia, who has moved out of the Olympic village, said she was sorry she could not take part in the Games and that she had expected to make the 400m hurdles final.
The 400m hurdles first-round heats were being run last night.
Halkia said she did not know how the banned substance was found in her sample.
Fifteen Greek athletes, including Halkia, have tested positive for methyltrienolone. They include 11 weight-lifters, swimmer Yannis Drymonakos and sprinter Tassos Gousis, who was sent home a few days before the Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee has also barred sprinter Katerina Thanou, from Beijing, for her role in a drug-testing scandal at the Athens Games.”
Why then has she been found with an illegal substance?? Someone that has volunteered for such a scheme, we would think is one of the “clean” athletes.
I must admit that I am confused with this one.
And I am not one of these Greeks that believes that there is a conspiracy against Greek athletes. Other nations are being caught too, and if our athletes are found guilty then they deserve to serve the punishment.
Its just that we have had so many athletes caught this time around, together with the Kenteris-Thanou fiasco at Athens, that we have surely tainted at these Olympics.
evdomada@evdomada.gmail
Athanacia said
I haven’t read a lot about Halkia but as for Thanou she should be banned for life for the fiasco with Kenteris. It was pathetic and shameful especially with the spotlight being on Greece during the Athens Games.
I believe that the drug testing at the Olympics is very strict and if the athletes have been caught then it is for good reason. I’d be asking if the Greek athletes who were banned prior to the Games were also found to have methyltrienolone in their system – if so then I think we can safely say there is no conspiracy…apart from the one where athletes try to cheat by taking drugs.
Of course drug taking is widespread unfortunately and I believe that all Olympic athletes should be tested rather than the current ‘hit and miss’ policy of testing some athletes but not others.
evdomada said
I have to admit that the Kenteris-Thanou incident was a major embarrassment to all Hellenes around the world. The whole fiasco over the motorbike fall, the fake hospital footage … just the whole thing was a joke.
The worst part is that we felt betrayed, especially by Kenteris. Even that super-fast passenger liner( that by the way dredged up the Aegean and caused mini-tidal waves) was named after him.
And the weightlifting debacle is just as embarrassing. I was in disbelief for days!! And then to blame the product ie not knowing the ingredients etc etc
Its all bad news either way. No one will ever read if they come out clear in a year or two. People will remember only that they got caught and that they were disqualified.