GREECE’S former 400m hurdles Olympic champion Fani Halkia has been handed a two year ban for her positive dope test at the Beijing Games, the Greek athletics federation said.

The federation confirmed a decision by its judicial committee to punish the former star.

A gold medallist at Athens in 2004 Halkia was expelled from the Beijing Olympics after testing positive for the banned steroid Methyltrienolone.

Halkia, her coach and two other athletes who failed tests also face maximum sentences of five years in prison in Greece over their respective cases.

The four suspects deny any wrongdoing and Halkia claims she was the victim of sabotage.

The same drug had previously been found in the samples of over a dozen Greek athletes in other disciplines, severely embarrassing Greek authorities in the run-up to Beijing 2008.

Olympic officials had been on the lookout for cheats from Greece ever since Methyltrienolone turned up in the results of 11 Greek weightlifters in April.

The International Olympic Committee has taken a keen interest in the case, hiring legal representation in Greece and suing Halkia’s coach for causing damage to its reputation.

source: foxsports.com.au