Greeks tried to outsmart IOC with 'rare' drug: anti-doping expert

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2008

ATHENS (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,...