Doping Casts Shadow Over Olympics -- Again

Zim Hosein

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Nov 27, 1999
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Doping Casts Shadow Over Olympics -- Again

ATHENS (Reuters) - Five weightlifters were banned from the Olympics after failing drugs tests, officials said on Thursday, as doping scandals continued to dominate the first week of the Games.

Host nation Greece has already suffered a black eye over the antics of its two top sprinters who withdrew from the Games on Wednesday after a furor over missed dope tests.

In another rumbling controversy, Iran escaped sanction for the failure of its team flag-bearer, judo world champion Arash Miresmaeili, to fight Ehud Vaks last Sunday because of Tehran's political boycott of Israel.

A source in the sport's governing body said the International Judo Federation (IJF) had now accepted that Miresmaeili had a genuine medical reason for showing up too heavy to fight.

Weightlifters from Morocco, Moldova, Hungary, India and Turkey tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and were expelled, distracting attention from arenas where exciting new standards were being set in swimming and gymnastics.

No issue has generated as much heat at the Athens Games as drug use, especially after the uproar over Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou threw Greeks into depression on the eve of what should have been a great triumph -- opening the country's first Olympics in 108 years last Friday.

The two sprinters, who missed a random drug test and wound up in hospital after a mystery motorcycle crash, withdrew from the Games Wednesday, maintaining their innocence even as many of their countrymen turned against them.

Their withdrawal spared the International Olympic Committee (IOC) the duty of expelling them and further embarrassing the host nation, the land where the Olympic Games began 2,700 years ago and where they were revived in 1896.

GREAT SORROW

"It is an issue which has caused great sorrow to us," said Athens Games spokesman Serafim Kotrotsos. "But now we have to focus our attention on the Games themselves."

One irony of the Kenteris/Thanou scandal was that they departed on the day when an Olympic sporting event was played in Ancient Olympia for the first time since the ancient Games were abolished in 393 A.D.. More than 80 shot-putters competed on sport's most historic site. Continued ...

:Q
 

badmouse

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Dec 3, 2003
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I can't believe people are surprised that these athletes use drugs. The stakes are high, the drugs can give a boost, the difference between winning and coming in 28th can be tiny. Plus, these guys are used to living on the edge, how else do you get to that level of competition?

It doesn't really matter. In fact, "beating the drug tests" is pretty much an olympic event itself. Why don't they all just acknowledge it?