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
