Doubts grow over Kenteris crash
Glyfada’s traffic police will today give the prosecutor their report into the motorcycle accident that star sprinters Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou said they had in the coastal suburb last Thursday night. The purported accident is central to the mystery of how Greece’s two top hopes in the Olympics failed to turn up for a mandatory doping test at the Olympic Village that day. Sources in the prosecutor’s office, however, say that doubt has been cast on whether there was any accident at all by the fact that statements made by witnesses and others involved in the case are not convincing. If chief prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos decides to open an official investigation (following this preliminary probe), this may concern violations of the law regarding the provision of illegal substances to athletes, hindering anti-doping controls, making false statements (regarding the crash), perjury by witnesses, and making false medical statements. Any criminal charges or call for further statements, however, will be filed after the Olympics. Kenteris, winner of the 200-meter in Sydney, and his training partner Thanou, silver medalist in the 100- meter in the same Games, both deny they have taken illegal substances. On Wednesday, they and their coach, Christos Tzekos, handed over their accreditations to the IOC Disciplinary Commission and pulled out of the Games. Kenteris also cut his ties with Tzekos. By late yesterday, seven doctors and the president of the KAT trauma hospital where Kenteris and Thanou were kept from late Thursday to Tuesday morning, had not been called to make a statement. Prosecutors want to know why the two were in the hospital for so many days. A medical examiner said he found no trace of purported head injuries to Kenteris and no injury to Thanou.
