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Exclusive: Inside the Katerina Thanou legal strategy
By Christopher Galakoutis
| Sunday, December 13 2009 11:11:27 AM |
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This past week the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to not award the 2000 Olympics 100m gold medal to the Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou, despite her listed as the winner of the race according to the sports’ governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). It was an unprecedented move.
HellenicAthletes.com understands that legal action is now a certainty, and that with its ruling the IOC has, “assured the beginning of the end for certain of its members,” according to a high-level source close to Ms. Thanou.
In what may prove to be a legal quagmire for the IOC, however, it did not strip Ms. Thanou of her silver medal, suggesting it has no hard evidence she did anything wrong in the lead-up to the Sydney Games.
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A decision to strip her of that silver medal absent any hard evidence would likely have opened a Pandora’s box, and embarrassed both the IOC and the IAAF.
Having been found guilty of doping in 2006, for instance, what might the ramifications be for a Justin Gatlin and his 100m gold from the 2004 Olympics, or a Shawn Crawford and his 200m gold from the same games? The notorious Trevor Graham coached them both, after all. The stream of cases would be endless.
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Gregory Ioannidis with Katerina Thanou
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A crusading IOC singling out Ms. Thanou on the one hand, yet aware of such risks on the other may have chosen to leave those skeletons in its closet. Instead, it based its decision on the events surrounding the widely reported Athens 2004 missed-test controversy.
In announcing the IOC decision, spokesman Mark Adams stated that Ms. Thanou, “…disgraced herself and the Olympic movement by avoiding three doping tests and, according to Greek authorities, she faked a motorcycle accident ... and she admitted anti-doping rules violations when she accepted a two-year ban from the IAAF."
But as HellenicAthletes.com has previously reported, the IAAF dropped the charges of refusal and evasion in its out of court settlement with Ms. Thanou in 2006.
Accordingly, the IOC's representative “should have chosen his words more carefully,” and that he, “showed ignorance and lack of knowledge,” said the source.
The IAAF also withdrew its appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport after reaching a confidential, out of court settlement with the athlete. The CAS erased the case from its register. That left Ms. Thanou's acquittal by the Greek athletics federation in 2005 as the only legal ruling on the 2004 case, to date.
Yet that 2004 case is what the IOC based its decision on to not award the Sydney gold.
Ms. Thanou’s legal team, to be headed by Dr. Gregory Ioannidis of the University of Buckingham’s School of Law, is expected to argue the IOC, despite its “independent body” status, is not immune from judicial intervention where a violation of human rights and European laws has occurred.
It will be argued that Ms. Thanou has been a victim of such violations at the hands of the IOC.
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Chris Galakoutis is a business and sports writer, as well as the founder and managing editor of HellenicAthletes.com. He can be reached at Chris@hellenicathletes.com
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