Ekaterini Thanou

Ekaterini Thanou [ θanu ] ( Greek Αικατερίνη Θάνου , born February 1, 1975 in Athens ) is a former Greek athlete .

Thanou won the silver medal in the 100-meter run at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney . Although Marion Jones, who was placed in front of her, was later disqualified for doping, Thanou was probably not allowed to advance to the gold medal rank because of the events in 2004. At the European Championships in Munich in 2002 , she was European champion over 100 meters.

For the 2004 Olympic Games in her hometown, Thanou was considered one of the greatest hopes for a medal in the Greek selection in the athletics competitions, but was suspended after a doping control bypassed.

Incidents at the 2004 Olympic Games

On the evening of August 12, 2004, Thanou and her teammate, the Greek 200-meter Olympic champion Konstantinos Kenteris , were summoned to a doping control in the Olympic village . The two athletes could not meet this because they were allegedly on the way home to pick up "personal items". However, as the Greek sports official Manolis Kolybadis told on August 15 on the Greek private television broadcaster Alpha TV , he reported to the two athletes when they entered the Olympic village of the impending control, whereupon they panicked ("they were like scared pigeons").

Kentéris and Thanou also let the two hours allowed them to catch up on the test pass unused, as they had meanwhile had to go to hospital because of a motorcycle accident.

However, inconsistencies in this story soon became known, as residents had not noticed anything about the accident, the police had not received any accident reports, and the two athletes did not go to the hospital near the scene of the accident, but to a clinic in another part of the city.

On August 12th, IOC President Jacques Rogge convened the internal disciplinary committee, which included the three IOC Executive Members Thomas Bach , Serhij Bubka and Denis Oswald . The commission wanted to hear the Greek athletes on the morning of August 13th. However, since Kenteris and Thanou were able to provide a medical certificate, the questioning was postponed to Monday, August 16.

Since the proven, deliberate refusal to undergo a doping test is counted as a positive test, this would result in a two-year ban and the immediate exclusion of the athletes concerned from the Olympic Games.

On August 14, the Greek National Olympic Committee decided after a heated debate 5: 1 against the vote of its President Lambis Nikolaou, Kentéris and Thanou not immediately expelled from the Greek team, but only suspended the athletes until their hearing on August 16.

This interview was then postponed to August 18. There Kenteris and Thanou returned their accreditations for the Olympic Games. Thanou announced that she wanted to end her career.

Suspension and comeback

A two-year ban from competitions due to the missed doping tests ended in December 2006. A trial in a Greek court originally scheduled for 2007 for perjury against Kenteris and Thanou was postponed twice and was due to take place in February 2009. In May 2011, Thanou and Kenteris were sentenced to 31 months probation for perjury, their trainers to 33 months and six doctors and two alleged accident witnesses to at least six months.

At the European Indoor Championships in Birmingham in 2007 , Thanou started for the first time after her suspension on international terrain. She finished sixth in the 60-meter final and was whistled at every performance by the British audience.

Since Thanou met the Olympic standard with a qualifying time of 11.39 s, she was nominated for the 2008 Olympic Games by the NOK of Greece on July 15, 2008 . On August 10, 2008, Thanou was excluded from the Olympic Games in Beijing by the IOC , and the 33-year-old was denied accreditation.

Web links

• Ekaterini Thanou in the database of World Athletics (English)

Footnotes

1. ↑ Kenteris and Thanou doping case closed ( Memento of December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: Netzeitung . June 26, 2006
2. ^ Trial against Thanou and Kenteris postponed: The Greek sprinters in court for perjury . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . September 24, 2007.
3. ↑ Anno Hecker: Thanou and Kenteris: Legendary escape behavior . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 10, 2011