Fani Halkia was formally charged with steroid use and she could stay behind bars for up to two years if convicted.

George Panagiotopoulus, Halkia’s coach, was likewise charged with administering prohibited substances with a penalty up to three years imprisonment and around $26,000 in fine.

No trial date has been set for both cases. Under the Greek law, doping offenses are considered as misdemeanor.

The Greek sports authorities have been embarrassed by the doping activity of their athletes, calling the series of positive tests among the Greeks as “organized effort”. Fifteen athletes, including Halkia, tested positive for the anabolic steroid methyltrienolone, popularly known as M3.

Halkia was disqualified from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing when it was announced on August 18 that she tested positive for said steroid. She won the gold medal in the women’s 400m hurdles at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Other athletes who tested positive for M3 were sprinters Tassos Gousis and Dimitris Regas. In March this year, 11 members of the Greek weightlifting team tested positive for the same prohibited compound.

M3, also known as R1881 and Metribolone, is a potent but non-aromatizable steroid. It is a 17-methylated derivative of trenbolone, and thus it is sometimes called as “oral tren”.

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A big “OOOPS” from the anti-doping officials.

The 300 or so test results, which had initially been reported missing by a team of independent observers during their recent visit in Beijing, have been traced by the International Olympic Committee. All tested negative for prohibited compounds.

According to the AP report, the team of 10 observers had been tasked by the World Anti-Doping Agency to review the Beijing Olympics drug-testing program.  The missing test results had been included in the team’s final report to WADA.

“Once the laboratory had apparently delivered all reports to the IO (independent observer) team, it transpired that around 300 test results were missing in comparison to the doping control forms,” the WADA report said.

“Regarding the ‘300 missing tests,’ it is our understanding that there has been a communication problem between the Beijing laboratory and the IO team on the results of a number of tests,” IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said in an e-mail. “The results of these tests were communicated to the IOC by the end of August. All were negative. The results have now been transmitted to the IO team.”

Apparently, the team conferred with the IOC’s medical commission regarding said results’ status, but IOC was unable to finish processing of the lab results in time for the group’s completion of their final report last month.

The procedural lapse had put the credibility of the anti-doping program in the Beijing Olympics. Additionally, the team reported another significant loophole in IOC’s control doping process at the Beijing Olympics.  It was found out that 102 of the 205 participating countries failed to provide sports officials with whereabouts information regarding their athletes. Such information is needed to implement pre-Games and out-of-competition testing.

It was not all negative points for the IOC however. The WADA group gave their thumbs up to the increased number of overall tests (4,770), blood tests (969) and tests for EPO (817) and human growth hormone (471). The 2008 Olympics implemented the largest drug-testing program in the history of the Olympics.

Six athletes were thrown out for doping violations during the Olympics, and three other cases are still pending.

The most controversial case of doping at Beijing has been Fani Halkia, the Greek hurdler who won the gold at the at the women’s 400m hurdles at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. On August 16 at the Beijing Olympics, Halkia tested positive for the anabolic steroidss methytrienolone.

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Greek track athletes Anastasios “Tassos” Gousis and Fani Halkia had presented a case against unnamed individuals who were allegedly responsible for the two athletes’ failed steroid tests.

Gousis told a prosecutor last week that he was unaware that he was given performance-enhancing drugs. He was supposed to compete at the 200 meter-event in Beijing Summer Olympics, but was sent home from a pre-Olympic training camp in Japan because he tested positive for the anabolic steroid methyltrienolone (also known as M3) in his A-sample on August 8. The test was conducted by the Greek anti-doping agency.

“Gousis said he didn’t know anything about the supplements he was taking and that no athlete would put his career at risk days before the Olympics,” a court official, who refused to be named, told Reuters.

The 29-year-old sprinter stated that their lives (his and Halkia’s) were put in danger by those individuals who administered the drugs without their knowledge, according top court officials.

Halkia also tested for M3 August 16 during the Beijing Olympics. The Greek hurdler initially denied the she has taken any illicit compounds and requested that her B-sample be tested. The next day her B-sample also tested positive.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has filed a lawsuit against Halkia’s coach, George Panagiotopoulos, who presented himself before prosecutor last week and said she had never deliberately taken performance-enhancing steroids.

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From AFP:

Over a dozen Greek athletes who failed doping tests prior to and during last month’s Beijing Olympics thought a rare anabolic steroid would help them elude tests, a leading anti-doping expert said Monday.

But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had been on the lookout for cheats from Greece ever since the drug, methyltrienolone, turned up in the results of 11 Greek weightlifters in April, Don Catlin, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s committee for science and medicine, told Ta Nea daily.

“The Greek case…involved the use of a particularly rare and dangerous anabolic whose use had not been officially recorded before,” Catlin said.

“Whoever marketed it in Greece undoubtedly argued that it is not harmful and could not be traced, as only small quantities are needed for it to act.”

The doping outbreak in the country’s Olympic team already resulted in a judicial inquiry in Greece. It also urged its parliament to enact tougher anti-doping legislation.

Under the new regulations, reward cuts for athletes and harsher penalties against those guilty of supplying banned substances and corrupt anti-doping and sports officials will be imposed.

Fifteen Greek athletes have tested positive for methyltrienolone before and during the Beijing Olympics. Out of the 15 athletes, eleven were from the weightlifting team who tested positive for M3 in an out-of-competition screening in March this year.

The most prominent of these controversial athletes is Fani Halkia, who won the silver in hurdling in Beijing. She was later disqualified and stripped of that medal.

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