Oly: Kenteris fiasco leaves Greeks with flame game

AAP General News (Australia)
08-14-2004
Oly: Kenteris fiasco leaves Greeks with flame game

ATHENS, Aug 13 AFP - The controversy surrounding the failure of Greece's Olympic sprint
champion Kostadinos Kenteris to attend a drugs test and his subsequent motorbike crash
left organisers facing an opening ceremony poser - who would light the Olympic flame?

Kenteris, who stormed to 200m gold in Sydney four years ago, had been widely expected
to be given the honour of being the final runner of the global, five-month long torch
relay.

But his road accident has left him hospitalised, forcing the organisers into a possible
late rethink.

Athens Games organisers did manage to name six Greek sporting legends, five men and
one woman, as the penultimate runners of the torch relay.

They will be Georgian-born, three-time Olympic weightlifting gold medallist Akakios
Kakiasvilis, 35; Ioannis Melissanidis, 27, gymnastics floor gold medallist in the 1996
Games -- Greece's first gymnastics medal in 100 years; Nikos Kaklamanakis, 36, Olympic
windsurfing gold medallist in the 1996 Atlanta Games, and Paraskevi Patoulidou, 39, who
memorably surged past the stumbling Gail Devers to claim gold in the 1992 Barcelona women's
100 metre hurdles final.

The others will be Greek-American basketball legend Nikos Galis, 47, who led Greece's
basketball national team to the European Championship in 1987 as well as football veteran
Mimis Domazos, 62, who was Panathinaikos skipper when the Greek club reached the 1971
European Cup final where they lost 2-0 to Ajax Amsterdam.

The Olympic flame was lit at the ancient Games' birthplace in Olympia, southern Greece,
on March 25, and has since made a 34-city trip across the world's five continents, by
plane, car, ship and foot.

In mid-July it returned to Greece for a frenetic, 7,000-runner tour through the country
before arriving in Athens for the Games.

Last night, it lit up the ancient Acropolis before beginning its final journey today
to the Olympic Stadium.

AFP sp

KEYWORD: OLY DOPING FLAME

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