June 18, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 13, 1429

CALI (Colombia), June 17: The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) on Tuesday slapped two-year bans on each of the 11 Greek lifters who tested positive in out-of-competition doping controls in April.

The federation also slashed Greece’s weightlifting quota for the Beijing Olympics in August from five men and three women to three and one, respectively.

“The concerned athletes as well as the Greek Federation were duly sanctioned,” the IWF said in a statement. “All the 11 athletes were suspended for two years.”

A former weightlifting coach, 11 lifters and another 13 people were charged at the end of May in the doping scandal that threatens to leave Greece with no weightlifters for Beijing.

Former coach Christos Iakovou, a Greek sporting hero who resigned his post after the affair broke in April, was charged as the brains behind the import, treatment and use of a banned steroid on the athletes. Iakovou faces a maximum five-year prison term if convicted.

The 11 athletes, including several members of the squad scheduled to participate in the Beijing Games before they failed doping tests, face two-year prison terms in addition to the sporting bans.

It is the second controversy to engulf the Greek weightlifting team, which has brought home an astonishing 12 medals, five of them gold, in the last four Olympics under Iakovou.

During the Athens 2004 Games, Greece’s bronze medal winner in the 62kg category Leonidas Sabanis was thrown out of the competition after tests revealed double the permitted amount of testosterone in his system.—AFP