Ex-Olympic champion Halkia handed doping ban

Former Olympic hurdles champion Fani Halkia has been suspended for two years for doping -- sports officials in Greece said on Thursday. Banned Greek athlete Halkia says tampered diet supplements may have caused failed doping tests. Halkia, who won a gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2004 Athens Olympics, was expelled from the Beijing Games this year after testing positive for the steroid methyltrienolone.

Officials from the Hellenic Association of Amateur Athletics (Segas) said on Thursday that 29-year-old Halkia had been given the ban at a board meeting of the sporting body held on Wednesday. It is effective from August.

Halkia denies any wrongdoing and suggests tampered diet supplements may be responsible for the failed doping tests.

A total of 15 Greek athletes were found to have taken methyltrienolone ahead of the Beijing Olympics, including Halkia and 11 members of the national weightlifting team.

Segas has already handed out two-year bans to sprinters Tassos Gousis and Dimitris Regas, who also failed doping tests this year.

In the wake of the scandal, the International Olympic Committee filed a lawsuit against Halkia's coach, George Panagiotopoulos, requesting his prosecution in Greece.

IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch traveled to Greece to testify at a judicial investigation into the spate of doping cases.

Last month, Halkia was charged with steroid use, an offense that carries a penalty of two years in jail.

The IAAF appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Thursday against doping bans given to seven Russian athletes by that country's federation because the suspensions are not severe enough.

Middle-distance runners Olga Yegorova, Svetlana Cherkasova, Yulia Fomenko, Yelena Soboleva and Tatyana Tomashova, and field athletes Gulfiya Khanafeyeva and Darya Pishchalnikova were all busted for doping ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

However, the Russian federation backdated their two-year bans, meaning they will be able to compete again in time for next year's world championships in Berlin.

"It is unacceptable to the IAAF that these athletes, who have committed serious and deliberate breaches of our anti-doping rules would receive an effective ban of approximately 9-10 months and see them eligible to compete again in the summer of 2009," IAAF president Lamine Diack said.

"What is more, I consider the circumstances surrounding these cases warrants the IAAF to seek an extended ban over and above the minimum two-year period."

The IAAF said it told CAS that the date of a sanction can't begin earlier than the day the athlete was first provisionally suspended

28.11.2008