Iakovou resigns; Greek weightlifters unlikely to compete in Beijing

Posted April 18, 2008 at 02:00 PM by Os Davis

Section: Beijing 2008, Doping, Events, Other, Featured Writers, Os Davis

Perhaps the sole positive to come out of the Olympic torch relay flap is its function as a distraction from a truly international sporting issue: performance enhancers.

The latest casualty of the war on doping is Greek weightlifting coach Christos Iakovou. Iakovou resigned Wednesday while a massive probe is undertaken among his national team.

Iakovou and his team first came under fire on March 7 when 11 of Team Greece’s 14 coed members tested positive for unnamed illegal performance-enhancing substance or substances. Last Thursday, the Greek Weightlifting Federation suspended Iakovou, holding him personally responsible for the accusation of doping:

During this disciplinary process, it was established that the national coach Christos Iakovou acted on his own initiative, without the approval of the federation, when he ordered the supplements in question. As he acknowledged himself before the disciplinary committee, he acted without following the proper procedure. Naturally, this responsibility falls on the national coach.

To those in the know, the busting of Iakovou a few months before the coach’s resignation (Iakovou had planned to leave the national team after the Beijing Games) comes as little surprise. As national newspaper Kathimerini writer Marili Margomenou puts it in her “Weightlifting coach under a shadow”:

In 1979, Iakovou talked about “mysterious little pills” the national team were taking and accused the assistant of the then federal coach of giving him some of those little pills. But two years earlier, in February 1977, according to an official document of the World Weightlifting Federation, Iakovou himself had failed a doping test with levels “a little above the accepted limits” in an Athens championship.

... at that time there was a battle raging for control of the Greek weightlifting federation and anyone tainted by even a whiff of suspicion would lose the battle. Eventually Iakovou gave up the sport and left for the US.

While the eleven who tested positive were yesterday informed by prosecutor Andreas Karaflos that their testimony would be heard in court on May 2, Iakovou’s attorney Michalis Dimitrakopoulos maintains that the illegal substance(s) in question were the result of faulty food supplements supplied by Shanghai-based Auspure Biotechnology.

On Tuesday, China State Food and Drug Administration spokesperson Yan Jiangying said on Monday that Auspure Biotech, which supplied the Greek team via internet order, is “neither approved nor registered as a drug producer with the SFDA.” Yan added that an investigation by Chinese government agencies into Auspure Biotech is ongoing.

The scandal virtually ensures that Greece will not send any weightlifters to the Games, a real blow to one of the world’s leading weightlifting powers: Team Greece has won 260 medals in international competition, including 12 in the Olympics, since Iakovou took over in 1989.