Susi grabs 200m Olympic Silver

Controversial Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou will not ‘inherit’ drug cheat Marion Jones’s 100m Olympic gold medal from the 2000 Sydney Games when officials meet this week, the BBC reported Tuesday.

American athlete Jones was stripped of the long jump and 100m gold medals she won nine years ago after admitting doping offences and Jones was sent to prison in the United States after lying to federal investigators.

Under International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules Thanou, who finished second behind Jones in Sydney, would now be expected to receive the gold medal.

However she faces a court case for allegedly lying to Greek police to avoid a drug test at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

No evidence has been presented to indicate Thanou was taking drugs when running against Jones in Sydney.

However suspicions arose after Thanou and Greek male sprinter Kostas Kenteris each missed a drugs test on the eve of the Athens Games, saying they’d been involved in a motorcycle accident on the way to the Olympic Village to undergo a doping examination.

It was the third time they’d failed to turn up for a test and led to a two-year ban from competition.

Subsequently, Thanou was barred from competing at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing for bringing athletics into disrepute.

The IOC executive board is meeting at its Lausanne headquarters on Wednesday and Thursday and it is expected Olympic chiefs will discuss the re-allocation of Jones’s medals from Sydney.

According to the BBC, there will now be a duplication of silver medals in the 100m, with third-placed finisher Tanya Lawrence of Jamaica being awarded a silver alongside Thanou and Lawrence’s compatriot, Merlene Ottey, promoted from fourth place to a bronze medal.

In the 200m, Jones’s gold is set to go to Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas with Sri Lanka’s Susanthika Jayasinghe moving up into second and Jamaica’s Beverly McDonald now in line for a podium finish.

Meanwhile in the long jump, Jones’s bronze medal is due to be awarded to Russia’s Tatyana Kotova.

Jones has also been stripped of her 4x400m relay gold medal and her 4x100m bronze but officials have still to decide whether these should be re-allocated. LONDON, AFP