Sprinters' doping saga still haunts Greece

By Karolos Grohmann

ATHENS (Reuters) - The 2004 Athens Olympics worked their way into Greece's social fabric for many of the wrong reasons, leaving a scar which is throbbing again now as the Beijing Games approach.

On the eve of the Athens opening ceremony, two Greek sprinters, both major medals hopes, were involved in the biggest Olympic doping scandal since Ben Johnson took drugs to win his 1988 Seoul Games 100 meters race in spectacular fashion.

Costas Kenteris, 200 meters champion at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and Katerina Thanou, 100 meters silver medalist at the same Games, were nowhere to be found when doping testers went for a surprise check in the athletes' village on August 11.

It was the beginning of a five-day doping saga that would overshadow the start of the Games and end with the sprinters being forced to withdraw in disgrace.

Four years on, Greeks are still smarting about the case.

"Why would I watch the Beijing Games when I was let down by my own Olympics?" said Athens waiter Costas Georgiadis, who had tickets and saw several events at the 2004 Olympics.

"Kenteris and Thanou, whether they were right or wrong, left us feeling cheated and hugely disappointed."

Both Kenteris and Thanou were local heroes after their Sydney medals. A small nation like Greece winning two sprinting medals as it gets ready to host the next Olympics is no mean feat.

Between Sydney and Athens, the sprinters, a product of private initiative with ultimately unlimited government backing to create medal winners, were treated like royalty.

They attracted sponsors and were given civil service jobs. Kenteris even had a high-speed passenger ferry named after him, though Thanou had to settle for roads taking her name.

OLYMPIC CAULDRON

A closely-kept secret that was revealed only later was that Kenteris was to light the Olympic cauldron at the Games opening ceremony on August 12 for all the world to see.

It all went horribly wrong on that hot evening in August, when officials noted down another doping test no-show for them, setting in train a chain of events that would quickly turn into farce.

The sprinters allegedly crashed on a motorcycle as they tried to race back to the village to get tested.

They then spent four days in hospital before facing an International Olympic Committee (IOC) disciplinary panel that urged them to withdraw amid a global whirlwind of publicity.