Katerina Thanou

Silver medal, September 23, 2000, Katerina Thanou, 100m. Sydney 2000

All year Katerina Thanou ran very fast in the 100m, and of course the predictions indicated that she was one of the favourites for a medal. She finished first in the preliminaries with a time of 11.10, and in the quarterfinals and semifinals she achieved 10.99 and 11.10, respectively, to finish second. In the final, Katerina Thanou had a hasty and invalid start. A fact that she paid dearly soon after, as she could not risk more and had to wait for the judge’s signal. Her reaction to the gun was therefore delayed, only 0.206 compared to 0.163 of Lawrence from Jamaica. Lawrence was in the lead until 20m, but at 60m she lost the lead to Jones (*) and a little later to Thanou, who ran incredibly fast for the rest of her race. So the silver medal came with a performance of 11.12, in a race that took place in a headwind of -0.4.

The final ranking:  – * Thanou (Greece) 11,12 – Lawrence (Jamaica) 11,18 Ottey (Jamaica) 11,19 Pintusevych (Ukraine) 11,20 Sturrup (Bahamas) 11,21 Fynes (Bahamas) 11,22 Ferguson (Bahamas) 11,29

*American Marion Jones finished first with a time of 10,57 . In the following years her performances were cancelled, she was punished with disqualification because of her involvement in a doping scandal. In December 2009, the IOC decided not to award Jones’ gold medal to any athlete and relegated her to second place, along with Thanou, Lawrence and Ottey in third.