Olympics
Notebook: Greeks seize evidence in raid

By Seattle Times news services

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ATHENS — Greek officials found 641 boxes containing food supplements with the stimulant ephedrine in a warehouse used by Christos Tsekos, the coach at the center of a doping scandal involving star sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, a judicial source said yesterday.

A prosecutor and two inspectors with the National Organization of Medicines, the Greek version of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, searched Tsekos' offices and warehouse Friday and took possession of the supplements.

The search was part of a probe into whether 2000 Olympic medalists Kenteris and Thanou tried to avoid a doping test on the eve of the Athens Games by staging a motor-scooter accident. A Greek judicial source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the food supplements — which are unlicensed in Greece — were ordered taken from Tsekos last year but the coach got them back somehow. The source also said a supplement sample was sent off for testing.

Officials first became aware of the Tsekos' connection to supplements last year when a consumer complained about getting ill from them. Tsekos was fined $18,300. Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, Tsekos' lawyer, said all the imports were legal and there were documents to prove it.

Kenteris, the 200-meter gold medalist at the Sydney Games, and Thanou, who took the silver in the 100 meters, could not be found at the Olympic Village for an Aug. 12 drug test. Hours later, they were in a motor-scooter accident that kept them hospitalized for days.

The Greeks have another problem in weightlifting. Leonidas Sampanis, who won a bronze medal this week and took silvers in 2000 and 1996, tested positive for drugs in an initial sample. Sampanis, Greece's first Athens medalist, denied taking banned substances despite testing positive for the male hormone testosterone.

The International Olympic Committee will announce today whether it will strip weightlifter Sampanis of his bronze medal, which sent the host nation into a delirium of delight on Monday.

Sampanis, hailed after his win as a hero and restorer of Greek honor, said he did not know why he tested positive.

"I swear, honestly I have never taken any banned substances, I swear on the lives of my two angels, my children," Sampanis, in tears, told reporters.
 
"I have passed many tests in my 10 years as a professional and I have never, ever tested positive. I beg you, all Greeks, not to desert me."

Notes

• Two Greek anarchists were arrested on charges they attacked and slightly injured four Spanish television journalists in Athens to cover the Olympics. Police said the two men, both 24, used "their hands and feet" to attack the journalists from Televisiona Espanola shortly after midnight as they were taping around Monastiraki square, a tourist district at the foot of the Acropolis. The journalists suffered cuts and bruises.

• A former world champion Russian weightlifter was pulled from the Olympics because of a positive drug test, a team official said. Albina Khomich was barred from competing in the women's 165-pound (75-kg) heavyweight division by the International Weightlifting Federation.

Khomich, 23, tested positive in a pre-competition screening by the federation. A backup sample will be analyzed today to verify the result.

• Two Russian men apparently looking for free room and board were arrested while trying to sneak into the Olympic Village posing as team members, police said. Both were arrested late Friday while trying to enter the village in a van given to them by a relative who is a member of Russia's Olympic delegation, police said.

• The U.S. Olympic Committee, concerned that President Bush's re-election campaign is using the Athens Games for political purposes, will review a copy of a televised campaign ad that credits Bush with liberating athletes from Afghanistan and Iraq so they can compete here.