Andreas Linardatos

Andreas Linardatos (born 30 September 1965) was a member of the Greek National Track and Field team in the 400m, 4x400 from the 1980s to the mid-'90s. His personal best was 47".27, achieved in July 1990 in Athens, Greece. Linardatos worked as a sprint coach for the Greek Athletics Federation until 2000. In 2002 he represented SNAC SYSTEM Inc. (a food supplement company based in Burlingame, California) in Europe. His company, Elite Sport Services, was located in Athens.

Coaching

Linardatos is considered by many to be an elite Greek track and field coach, incorporating into his coaching philosophy a lot of novel ideas and training concepts from coaches of the former Soviet Union, East Germany, Italy and the United States. He is a close friend of late professor Carmello Bosco and Ukrainian top coach Remi Korchemny.

BALCO scandal

Linardatos, according to secret email correspondence between him and Victor Conte, knew a lot of the underground going on in the world of the athletic scene. Some Greek newspapers like "To Vima" and the Sunday column "Ios tis Kyriakis" accused him of conspiracy to deliver tetrahydrogestrinone [Death AK, McGrath KC, Kazlauskas R, Handelsman DJ. Tetrahydrogestrinone is a potent androgen and progestin. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2004 May;89(5):2498-500 [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15126583&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum] ] to Greek top notch athletes like Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou. It was claimed that he was co-operating with Christos Tzekos, Remi Korchemny and Victor Conte. No evidence was brought in front of any court and by June of 2007 no legal procedure has been taken upon him.

The "BALCO scandal" started in 2003, when the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California began investigating BALCO. U.S. sprint coach Trevor Graham had given an anonymous phone call to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in June 2003 accusing a number of athletes being involved in doping with a steroid that was not detectable at the time. He also named Victor Conte as the source of the steroid. To prove his accusations Graham delivered a syringe containing traces of the steroid. Shortly thereafter, Don H. Catlin, director of the Olympic Analytical Laboratory in Los Angeles, succeeded in developing a testing procedure for tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). Now able to detect the new substance, he tested 550 existing samples from athletes, of which 20 tested positive for THG.

On September 3, 2003, agents of the Internal Revenue Service, Food and Drug Administration, San Mateo Narcotics Task Force, and USADA conducted a house search at the BALCO facilities. Beside lists of BALCO customers in a BALCO field warehouse they found containers whose labels indicated steroids and growth hormones. In a house search at Anderson's place two days later, steroids, $60,000 in cash, name lists and dosage plans were found. On June 6, 2006 the house of baseball player Jason Grimsley (Arizona Diamondbacks) was searched as part of the ongoing BALCO probe. Grimsley later said that federal investigators wanted him to wear a wire in order to obtain information against Barry Bonds. He told people which players used performance-enhancing drugs. When the dust cleared, Grimsley was released by the Diamondbacks and was given a 50-game suspension by Major League Baseball.

Among the athletes listed in the record of BALCO customers were MLB players Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Benito Santiago, Jeremy Giambi, Bobby Estalella, Armando Rios, hammer thrower John McEwen, shot putters Kevin Toth and C.J. Hunter, sprinters Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Dwain Chambers, and Kelli White the medium-distance runner Regina Jacobs, and several members of the National Football League's Oakland Raiders, including Bill Romanowski, Tyrone Wheatley, Barrett Robbins, Chris Cooper and Dana Stubblefield.

External links

* [http://www.andreas-linardatos.com Homepage of coach Andreas Linardatos]
* [http://www.elitesportservices.com Base of Linardatos company]
* [http://www.snac.com The supplement company of Victor Conte]

References