ATHENS (AFP) — Greece could miss the Beijing Olympics weightlifting event after eleven team athletes were revealed Friday to have failed surprise drugs tests by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The Greek weightlifting federation said it had suspended national coach Christos Iakovou, who resigned after the first samples from the unidentified athletes tested positive.
"Tests on the second sample will be requested ... and the (federation) will subsequently form an investigative committee on the issue," it said.
"Mr Iakovou has been suspended until the case is clarified."
It was unclear how many of the athletes, who face two-year bans if a drugs violation is confirmed, are part of the eight-member Greek squad scheduled to compete at the Beijing Games in August.
But Greece could miss out on the competition altogether if more than two of its athletes are sanctioned, a federation official told AFP.
"If the results are upheld, the Greek federation will be penalised and nobody will go to Beijing," the official said.
The federation will officially request a follow-up test on Monday, he added.
The surprise test by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was carried out March 7 on orders by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), the Greek federation said.
"If the initial findings are confirmed, it will be a dark page in the golden history of weightlifting," said IWF general secretary Yiannis Sgouros, who formerly headed the Greek weightlifting federation for nearly two decades.
"But this cannot tarnish the (feats) that glorified Greece and weightlifting in recent years," he said.
Private TV channel Mega said five male and six female athletes had been implicated in the case, adding that the out-of-competition tests were conducted at the team's training ground in Agios Kosmas south of Athens ahead of last month's European Union championship in Germany.
Weightlifting has brought Greece some of its greatest successes at Olympic Games level, with a total tally of 18 medals including eight gold.
A former champion weightlifter, Iakovou is viewed as a national hero in Greece for creating a 'Dream Team' of lifters that brought home an astonishing 12 medals, five of them gold, in the last four Olympics.
But one of his top athletes, Leonidas Sabanis, was thrown out of the Athens 2004 Games and stripped of his bronze medal in the 62kg category after tests revealed double the permitted amount of testosterone in his system.
The Greek team did not perform to high expectations in Athens and finished with one bronze medal.
Weightlifting sport is no stranger to drug violations as cases surface at virtually every recent major event.
In 2006, the entire Indian team was slapped with a 12-month competition ban for doping offences and nine members of the Iranian team were sanctioned after testing positive for excess testosterone levels.
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