Thanou and Kenteris out of Olympics

[Rave]

Right, so two of the most exciting sprinters of the last decade are now going to miss their home Olympics.

Does anyone honestly believe that they genuinely thought that they could cheat and get away with it? Or have ridiculously intransigent drugs rules just robbed the games of two of their star performers? Yeah, the atmosphere in the stadium for their respectve races is going to be brilliant now.

Sorry, just had to vent

Rich :¬)

[Zathras]

It's all stage management. By pulling out they escape any sanctions or bans the IOC could have imposed and effectively get away with no official blot on their copybooks. They'll try to come back and play the great wronged, how they were forced out unfairly from their home games yet nothing was ever proved against them. Missing two drugs tests doesn't just happen by accident or mistake and there are allegations of futher infringements. Hopefully someone in the Greek authorities will have the backbone to really get to the bottom of the whole 'accident' and take full legal action if any of it is staged. I like the idea of suing them for all the funding they've received from the Greek public purse to support their athletics for the last four years.

[Rave]

The point is that if they knew their choice coming to the Olympics was to take a test, fail and be banned, or come up with a spurious excuse for missing the test and get banned anyway, why did they bother? It makes no sense at all, does it?

Rich :¬)