A weightlifting drugs scandal and yet another twist to the saga of disgraced Greek sprinter Kostadinos Kenteris dominated the Olympics.

The Games was overshadowed by a drug scandal in weightlifting and the doping furor was followed by news that sprinter Kenteris had faked a mysterious motorcycle accident he was supposedly involved in with fellow sprinter Ekaterini Thanou after the pair missed a drugs test last week.

Greek heroes Thanou and Kenteris withdrew from the Athens Games on Wednesday at an International Olympic Committee (IOC) hearing into their missed test. The IOC said meanwhile seven weightlifters had tested positive for banned substances since July 30 in the latest controversy to hit the tarnished sport.

Olympic officials, meanwhile, backed away from sanctioning Iran for its judo world champion’s failure to fight an Israeli. Iran had publicly boasted that its judo world champion Arash Miresmaeili — disqualified for showing up over the maximum weight — was told not to go to the mat with Ehud Vaks last Sunday because of Tehran’s political boycott of Israel.

An official Iranian news agency report quoted Miresmaeili as saying he was supporting the Palestinian cause — a sentiment that put him in clear conflict with Olympic ideals. But the International Judo Federation (IJF) said that after investigation it had determined that it was not politics that kept Miresmaeili from fighting Vaks, but a digestive problem. He was fully 5 kg over the 66 kg limit at the weigh-in.

“The commission concluded that since Miresmaeili stated that he had no pre-planned intention for not competing ... the only point that remained was that Miresmaeili was overweight on the weigh-in day,” the IJF said in a statement. “As the IJF has no rule for penalizing overweight athletes, the IJF executive committee decided not to take any sanction.”

Six weightlifters were suspended after submitting positive doping tests and are already banned from competing at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the ruling body IWF said yesterday.

“I am very unhappy about the cheating. This is a sad moment,” IWF president Tamas Ajan told a news conference. The IWF said five of the athletes in question were Wafa Ammouri of Morocco, Pratima Kumari Na of India and Sahbaz Sule of Turkey in the women’s side as well as Moldovan Victor Chislean and Zoltan Kecskes of Hungary on the men’s side.

All five were caught at out-of-competition tests and none of them competed in Athens.

Of those six, five tested positive for anabolic steroids, the IWF said. Earlier in the week, Myanmar weightlifter Nan Aye Khine was disqualified for diuretics abuse after finishing fourth in Saturday’s 48kg event. Like the others, she is also banned for the 2008 Games. All athletes face two-year bans from competition.

The weightlifting body IWF has tried its best to clamp down on substance abuse. Entire teams can be banned if three lifters test positive in one year.

“The IOC praises the work and determination of the weightlifting federation in its fight against doping by testing its athletes on a systematic basis according to its rules,” said IOC President Jacques Rogge in a statement issued yesterday.

IWF said later that a seventh weightlifter had tested positive to a banned. Ajan told a press conference the weightlifter was an Indian woman, later identified by her team as Sanamacha Chanu who finished fourth in the 53kgs category.

Ajan, who did not identify the lifter, said she had tested positive to a banned diuretic used to lose body weight. Ajan said the Indian Olympic Committee had been informed of the second Indian positive test.

Amid all this the Greek saga continued. A judicial source said that state investigators probing the motorcycle accident which the pair said put them in hospital have cast doubt on their story: “The investigators have several question marks which for such a seemingly simple accident normally do not exist,” the source said.

The patch of oil cited by the athletes, in comments made public by Greek team officials, as the cause of their late-night skid had not been found in forensic tests, the source said.

Initial investigations have also revealed that Greek sprinters Kenteris and Thanou probably faked a motorcycle accident after missing a drugs test, a high-ranking legal source said yesterday. Greece’s two top sprinters were said to have suffered minor injuries in the mysterious accident which occurred late last Thursday after they had failed to appear for a doping test at the Olympic athletes’ village.

The inquiry by a Greek prosecutor had shown that either the accident did not take place at all, or that the athletes deliberately crashed the bike in order to give themselves injuries, the source, a high-ranking official, added. Two witnesses had come forward but neither was credible. One claimed to have seen the accident and another said he had taken the athletes to hospital.

Philippos Koutsaftis, a medical expert who examined the athletes on Monday, had concluded that if there had been an accident the motorbike must have been traveling at a low speed, the source said. The medical expert also told the investigation that the initial reports on their duo’s condition from the KAT hospital in Athens had exaggerated the extent of their injuries, which were minor. Kenteris and Thanou remained in hospital for five days, which the expert concluded was unnecessary.

The International Association of Athletics Federations is set to rule on Aug. 26 whether to ban Kenteris and Thanou from competition for missing other drugs tests this year.