Thanou makes Olympic team

Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou, who was banned for two years after a doping scandal on the eve of the Athens 2004 Olympics, has made the team for next month's Games and could travel to Beijing, officials said yesterday.

The Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) included Thanou in the Greece squad after she finished fifth in a 100 metres race on the island of Crete late on Monday with a time of 11.39 seconds.

"She has made the B time for the team so she is on it," Greece's chef de mission Isidoros Kouvelos told reporters during the preliminary squad presentation.

The B time is the lower qualification mark that if beaten by another Greek athlete in the same discipline would force Thanou out of the team, although that is highly unlikely.

Whether Thanou, who also won the 100m silver medal at the Sydney 2000 Games, will travel to Beijing was unclear.

"Officially, she has now made the team but we do not yet know if she wants to go to Beijing," an HOC official said on condition of anonymity.