Public enemy number one
Reproduced from Der Spiegel magazine (www.Spiegel.de)
As the Greek Ioannis drugs investigators Psarellis was hindered in his work
On the day of his greatest triumph Ioannis Psarellis seems strangely dissatisfied. He sits on the terrace of his apartment in the Athens suburb of Palio Faliro. It’s the Wednesday of last week, the day on which Greece molts.
Nine TV trucks and 300 journalists are at the same time in front of the Hilton in downtown. The reporters listen to the explanation of the Star lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos. He says Konstantinos Kenteris and Aikaterini Thanou would forego a start in the Olympics, they “sacrifice themselves for their country.”
It is a pathetic enter an. Psarellis did not expect anything else. He shakes his head. Psarellis wearing brown Bermuda shorts and a white shirt. It is a small and narrow but strong man He speaks perfect English and speaks calmly.
Konstantinos Kenteris was Greece’s greatest athlete. And if you will, then was Ioannis Psarellis, 34, his toughest opponents.
He is the only active in the international order Greek doping investigators. Two years ago, a chemist began to hunt cheaters in his country for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Without knowing what that would mean for him.
Psarellis the sport was always connected. As a triathlete, he was up to the national team in early 2000, he managed an Ironman today easily. His interest in the fight against doping was awakened at the Olympic Games in Sydney. There he watched the investigators at work. In June 2001, he wrote a work on the defense of the IOC doping in the framework of postgraduate studies at the University of Leicester. He was inspector in early 2002.
It was not a good time to make career in Greece as a Beagle. Psarellis” entry fell exactly in phase, in which the Greeks were preparing for the games. Every nation that wants discharges Olympics, winning many more medals. By all means.
That there would be a conflict of interest between Psarellis and the army of the sport, was inevitable. One fought for clean competitions, the other for their reputation and their country. Everyone felt right. But Psarellis was the weaker.
He got IDTM by the Swedish company, which takes over the training checks on behalf of the Wada, regularly a list of the names of Greek athletes that he should visit. Also Kenteris and Thanou were every now and then on the sheet.
The list was Psarellis” mission. He is not a narrow-minded official, but an idealist. Sport has rules that you must abide by. “I control without emotion,” he says. But he did not know what a swamp waiting for him.
If Psarellis athletes wanted to test, sometimes they just ran away from him. He is convinced that the Athenians power center “is always a back door is open.”
In June 2002 Psarellis wanted along with a foreign colleague and two assistants check a javelin thrower. She trained at the Olympic Stadium of Athens. When she discovered the investigators, she fled to her apartment, which was in the Olympic Park. She closed on. She did not answer the phone. Psarellis waited all night outside the door.
When he rang again the next morning, opened the roommate, a weightlifter. The javelin was gone. “In Greece, the athletes always have the opportunity to make a hasty retreat,” says Psarellis.
He insisted. Psarellis is doping investigators “vocation”. He receives no salary, only an expense allowance.
But then his situation changed. The hunter became the hunted.Journalists and officials ordered him to betray the Greek Athletics Federation, which is designed to test athletes when he: “You’re Greek, you have to support us.”
If Psarellis had tested athletes, it was the next day in the newspaper, although he had no reporter informs. He was reviled as a do-gooder and abused worse than Patriot. “Goal News” wrote Psarellis had “a Greek, the duty to be a shield, so that no injustice is happening to our masters and exposed our country.”
It was bullying before an audience of millions.
Repeatedly Psarellis was demonstrated. The chief doctor of the Greek Association
Michalis Averkiou, claimed Psarellis contrary to his tests against the procedure. And Christos Smyrlis-Liakatas, at the time deputy of the then-ruling socialist Pasok party, said Psarellis am directed by the Conservatives.
“I was naive,” says Psarellis. “I underestimated how much the same the interests of doctors, coaches, politicians and journalists.” In Greece could “make an athlete, what he wants, so he will win a medal.” He had “picked the wrong country to be drugs investigators.”
The pressure on him increased rapidly. In June 2002 Psarellis athletes wanted to test just before a Grand Prix in Athens. Two days before the meeting, he sat in the cafeteria of the Hotel Caravel, when suddenly rushed a manager of the event. The man told him to cancel the checks.He shouted, “You’re destroying the event!” The reception he instructed to give Psarellis no room and identify any of his phone calls to the athletes. At the end it was the manager on the way: If he continues to do so, end it “with a bullet in the head”.
Psarellis is for the Greek athletes a security risk, because he was himself a competitive athlete and I know how they think. He knows their tricks. If he sees, for example, that a swimmer trained only once a day over a long period, its shrill alarm bells. “Float quickly lose the feeling for the water,” he explains. “There is only one reason to reduce his program like this.”He thinks doping.
When he tried to ask a swimmer is a urine sample, he did not hit him where it should have been. The next day Psarellis received a fax from the International Swimming Federation: The athlete has changed his whereabouts shortly.
Psarellis fighting a desperate battle. On 10 December 2002 he lost his job as a manager at a triathlon Organising Committee of the Olympic Games in Athens (ATHOC). The dismissal was based on a “serious concussion of the trust relationship.” Psarellis says: “You accuse me of having worked on the side as a doping investigators.” He has filed a lawsuit.
“It’s crazy,” says Psarellis. “The people who have always promised clean games, fire the man who wanted to realize their promise. Instead to be proud of me, they let me fall.”
He has tried everything. He has asked the International Olympic Committee for help to appeal his termination. He has asked the National Doping Agency to take action against abuses in the country. He would be willing to testify before the prosecutor. But the only response he got to hear was, “Boy, let that be you only get more problems..”
Ioannis Psarellis has survived all these experiences are not harmless.When he tells his story, he sometimes seems hectic, as a man driven. He is still doping investigators. He fulfilled his last job in April. But a few months ago he asked to no longer need to test Greeks.
Clean games had been promised. “Bullshit,” says Psarellis.
Now running Olympia, Greece, and is ashamed of the affair Kenteris and Thanou. Psarellis feels no satisfaction. The Lies “yes go on.”