Greek Athletes Fail Drug Tests

Four days before the Olympics opening ceremony, the games' embarrassed hosts yesterday admitted that two Greek team members had tested positive for banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Only slightly easing their discomfort was the fact that, as members of the Greek baseball team, both had been imported from North America and handed citizenship especially for the games. The team is bankrolled by Peter Angelos, the multimillionaire Greek-American owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

Andrew Brack has tested positive for the same anabolic steroid, stanozolol, as the disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson in 1988 and will be dropped from the team. Derek Nicholson, a reserve player, tested positive for a diuretic, officials confirmed.

"That we are talking about doping is very sad," said Yiannis Papadoyiannakis, chef de mission of the Greek Olympic team.

Cynics will say a change of nationality clearly does not mean a change of habits, with American Major League Baseball having regularly been accused by the World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Dick Pound of failing to deal with a major drug problem.

Wada has been almost as critical of Greece's attempts to stamp out doping. Papadoyiannakis also revealed that the agency had demanded detailed information on the whereabouts of several of Greece's top Olympic competitors for routine testing.

He added that Kostas Kederis, the Olympic 200m champion, and Ekaterini Thanou, the European 100m champion, were not currently in Greece and would not be returning in time for Friday's opening ceremony.

"We will fully cooperate with Wada," Papadoyiannakis said. "The Greek team will crack down on doping wherever we find it."

Two other Olympic hopefuls were yesterday revealed to have tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO). The Spanish canoeist Jovino González and the Swiss cyclist Oscar Camenzind have been dropped from their teams.