Dimitris Chondrokoukis: Drug Test Failure Shows Pressure of Olympic Sports

Greek high-jumper Dimitris Chondrokoukis’s failed drug test shows the dark side of Olympic athletic competition. The failure revealed stanozolol, a banned steroid, and came as a result of an unannounced and unscheduled drug test nine days ago, according to Simon Hart of The Telegrah.

Chondrokoukis, 24, becomes the second Greek Olympian to be dismissed from the country’s team. Yesterday, Voula Papachristou was sent home after making inappropriate racial jokes on her Twitter account.

For Chondrokoukis, the positive drug test comes as a bit of a surprise. He had already claimed the gold medal at the 2012 Indoor World Championships in Istanbul this past March. As a rising star in the world high-jumping circuit, the pressure may have been surmounting on the young Olympian as the London games approached.

This begs several questions that all have very strong and relevant answers. Was Chondorkoukis a product of his own success and desire to continue to excel above his peers? Did the pressure from his father (who is also his coach and trainer) and country push him to do anything it took to succeed? Had he been using performance enhancing drugs all along without being detected?

The most interesting of the three questions has to be: Was he using steroids all along? As a winner at the 2012 Indoor World Championships, why would he feel he needed a competitive edge in order to repeat his performance in London?

A speculative mind might say that he had been using these PEDs all along. Is there proof of this? No. However, the drug test that discovered his usage was a random event. Was there random testing before the championships in Istanbul? If athletes know when they will be tested, it is easier for them to plan their steroid cycles and prepare for tests by taking other supplements that can mask their drug usage.

Pressures surrounding Olympic athletes cannot get any bigger. The Olympics is hosted on a world stage, which gives athletes a chance to have their name immortalized in the record books for the rest of time.

Does this justify their actions? No, it certainly doesn’t.

But it helps explain the desire for these athletes to go outside the boundaries of acceptability when choosing to take banned substances in order to help them achieve their goals.

So, why did Chondorkoukis feel he needed to take steroids? Did he want to prove something to himself? To his father? To his country?

To the world?

Or, was it that he had been taking them all along and found himself on the wrong end of a sting-type operation aimed at combating the use of these illegal substances?

Whatever the reasoning for his choice to turn to steroids, Chondorkoukis made a bad decision—a decision that many athletes continue to make despite the consequences.

This is simply another case of an athlete tasting success and then trying to cut corners in order to give him an edge over the competition.

Thanks to effective random IOC drug testing, the world will never know if Chondorkoukis was the best in the world. By choosing to take a shortcut, he, like many others who chose PEDs, has ruined his chance at Olympic glory.

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