The annals of doping in Greece are now focused on retrospective controls of frozen samples
“There is no more doping” said Sofia Sakorafa in her interview with Documento a year ago. “Only the dumb are drugged” was the theme of Giorgos Pomaski last summer. At the same time that the 2024 carnival was coming to drug-affected Greece, a bomb from the past went off: cycling champion Christos Volikakis is dope! But not today, nor yesterday or the day before yesterday, but in the distant 2016, in a check that took place during the days of the Rio Olympics.
“I passed countless times through doping control and I was always clean” reminded the… defendant, brandishing his biological passport. Alas, however, the “clean” of 2016 is not necessarily clean eight years later, just as Chrysopigi Devetzi was not clean in the re-checks carried out several years after the Beijing Olympics. The old doctrine that “doping goes as far as anti-doping goes” is now in doubt. Doctors and labs have a way of covering the handicap and doing justice. Even retrospectively.
Black birthday
Volikakis, who turns 36 tomorrow, is now at risk of the four-year ban stipulated by the WADA protocol. The top cyclist declares his innocence in interviews and emphasizes that the substance in question called LGD-4033 (an anabolic SARM supplement that contributes to the regeneration and development of muscle mass, especially after fractures and other injuries) was also detectable in 2016. “I do not know the specific substance and I have never used it,” he claimed through his lawyer.
Volikakis announces a legal fight until vindication and publicly wonders “why there was a re-check after eight whole years”, since he himself only finished 12th in Rio. However, this appears to be random sampling. The program of re-checks started as far back as 2004, while the first frozen samples from the Rio Games were opened last December.
According to the statistics released by WADA, 46 medals from the London Olympics (2012) changed hands after the fact, after 73 doping violations were detected in the refrigerators with the guilty urine.
A Greek weightlifter of 94 kg, David Kavelasvili, climbed from 13th place to 6th with a delay of four years, already… retired, after half of the athletes who lifted more kilos than him turned out to be drugged. Among them was the Olympic gold medalist Ilya Ilyin from Kazakhstan, as well as the three who followed him in the initial ranking! The athlete who received the gold by post, Iran’s Mohammadpour, had taken 5th place on London soil.
Withered chicken
Four “medal winners” of the Athens Games, all from countries of the former Soviet Union, were also caught doping in retrospective controls: shot putters Bilonoch (Ukrainian, gold), Tikhon (Belarusian, silver), Kriveliova (Russian, bronze) and discus thrower Yachenko ( Belarus, bronze). In fact, the first three had received the medals and the chicken in the… hallowed ground of Ancient Olympia. When the reviews were introduced the IOC set the time horizon at eight years, but recently the deadline was increased by 1/5. It now takes ten years for the athletes’ urine and blood samples to be destroyed. How many Greek Olympians and champions with distinctions from 2014 onwards are sleeping peacefully today?
Volikakis holds a bronze medal from the 2008 World Championships in the keirin event, as well as three silvers and one bronze from the European Championships. He also won two golds in scratch and points at the 2009 European Games in Minsk, where he was flag bearer in the closing ceremony. If he is penalized for doping, his results and distinctions from 2016 onwards will be removed from cycling’s records. Among other extracurricular privileges, he is a lieutenant in the Navy.
The lost medals of Devetzis
When Pigi Devetzi, the source of extraordinary achievements, left active work, the window of her house was shining. A silver medalist in 2004 in Athens with 15.32m, the triple diver won a second Olympic medal in 2008 in Beijing with a jump of 15.23m. A year later, however, she was punished for the first time with a two-year ban for refusing to pass a test doping.
The scandal was largely hushed up by the domestic media, but was followed by a double “torpedo” due to the re-inspections. In 2015, Debetz’s sample from the 2007 World Championships in Osaka (where the disgraced champion had won a bronze medal) tested positive for an anabolic substance, and a few months later she was stripped of her Beijing medal as well, after the machines flashed red again for testing of 2008. Today there is no result of Debetzis after 2006 in the official records.
She herself, a survivor of course at the age of 47, insists on her innocence and complains to SEGAS and the state that they left her helpless. “You see, I was no one’s minion” he burst out in an interview in 2021. “We will support you, they told me then, but they never did. For so many years I was their “child”. Their “daughter”. Through my labors, they and Greece were glorified. And yet, in the difficult moment, everyone was absent. It was like kicking a child in trouble when he is asking for the support of his family. That’s how I felt.”
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