Gregg Tafralis

Gregg Tafralis (actually: Gregory Louis Tafralis ; born April 9, 1958 in San Francisco ) is a former American shot putter .

Tafralis consecutively attended Capuchino High School in San Bruno (1976), the College of San Mateo (1977) and the Skyline CC (1978). He originally started out as a discus thrower and was trained by his friend Mike Smith. He was later trained by Mike Lewis and looked after by Victor Conte , who was at the center of the 2003 BALCO affair .

In 1985 he finished eighth at the World Indoor Athletics Games in Paris . In 1987, a fourth place at the World Indoor Championships in Indianapolis was followed by a silver medal at the Pan American Games . At the World Championships in Rome , he was eliminated in qualification. The following year he was ninth at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

In the fall of 1989, he was banned from international competitions for four years because he broke the boycott of sports against the apartheid regime in South Africa . The ban on Tafralis was lifted in 1992.

A doping test on February 11, 1995 was positive, so that he lost the silver medal he had won in March 1995 at the Pan American Games in Mar del Plata, and was banned for two years. On February 16, 1999, Tafralis tested positive for metandienone and was suspended for life.

In 1985 and 1986 he was US runner-up and in 1988 national indoor champion.

Tafralis is 1.83 m tall and weighed 129 kg during his playing days. His son Adam Tafralis is a gridiron footballer . He first played as a quarterback for the college football team at San Jose State University and now competes for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League .

Personal bests

• Shot put: 21.98 m, June 13, 1992, Los Gatos
  • Hall: 21.01 m, February 28, 1986, Princeton

Web links

• Gregg Tafralis in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Athlete portrait at USA Track & Field
• Gregg Tafralis in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Footnotes

1. ^ Peter Matthews: Athletics 1996. The international Track and Field Annual. SportsBooks, Surbiton 1996, ISBN 1-899807-01-2 , p. 98 and p. 128.
2. ↑ USA Track & Field: Doping Suspensions - Lifetime Bans ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ David Kiefer: Father of SJSU QB made sure son didn't make same steroid mistakes ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Mercury News. 2005