Category — Greece

What earned judoka Ilias Iliadis the right to be his country’s Olympic flag bearer? He bagged a gold medal during the Athens 2004 Games and could very well bag another one in Beijing. Since Greece is traditionally the first country to enter the Olympic stadium, Ilias will be the very first athlete to appear at the Bird’s Nest when the Games open in August 8, 2008.

Photo source: BBC

The Olympics’ war on drugs claims another “victim” — Greek swimmer Ioannis Drymonakos who tested positive for methyltrienolone, a banned steroid. If this trend continues, we just might come up with a Hall of Shame listing the names of Olympians whose performances are drug-enhanced.

Ioannis is ranked second in the world in the 200-meter butterfly. He is also the European record holder for said event.

PHOTO CREDIT: AP via Yahoo

Argh. Drugs. Bad news for weightlifting and the Olympic movement in general. Bad news for the Greek Olympic team in particular.

A DPA Report: A second doping test on a group of 11 Greek weightlifters who initially tested positive for banned substances was also found to be positive, making the athletes unlikely competitors for the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics, reports said Friday.

The second test was conducted in a laboratory in Cologne, Germany and confirmed results first announced on April 4, which found almost the entire men’s and women’s national teams to have failed tests conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Read the rest here. The sad thing about positive doping reports like this is that they no longer have shock value. Reports about use of banned drugs by athletes have become staple in the daily news so we, members of the public, shrug our shoulders and say, “Huh, what else is new?” Sad.