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Seven years after the scandal with absence of the Greek sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou from the doping control on the eve of the Olympic Games in Athens, the Court of Appeal ruled that they are innocent in the case with the road accident, which many commentators suppose alleged. The trial saga dragged on for years and there was real risk of sending the case to the archive because of the limitation period, due to successive continuances.

The trial began in January, but the main accused did not appear in the court, where only their defenders along with coach Christos Tsekos were. After hearing the testimony of "eyewitnesses" and "witnesses" of the supposed crash, in May, the District Court in Athens declared guilty the athletes, their coach Christos Tsekos and seven doctors from the KAT hospital where Kenteris and Thanou were taken after the accident. The judges ruled that the disputed accident has never happened and gave all involved suspended sentences ranging from 6 to 33 months.

The hearing of the case by the Court of Appeal, however, gave it entirely different course. "We have no data to conclude that the accident involving Kostas Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou was staged," said the prosecutor Galinos Bris in his pleading, who had very different opinion from that of the first instance judges.

The Court of Appeal unanimously supported the proposal of the prosecutor and took off all charges against the defendants, arguing that the evidences that the crash has not happened have never been proven in court.

Therefore, only the motorcycle had to be blamed for the scandal, which darken the opening of the Games and shook all of Greece.

Nevertheless, the court imposed a suspended sentence of 12 months to coach Christos Tsekos for possession of banned substances.

The Greek media commented the news with irony. "The Greek justice has demonstrated its magical abilities again and justified Kenteris and Thanou. But the question still is: How can the court that punished Tsekos for anabolic steroids trafficking to justify Kenteris and Thanou? Who has taken these anabolic steroids in the end?" asks rhetorically the online edition sportculture.gr. The portal sport24.gr even defines the case as "legal series for the case of the "road accident".

Readers comments online are still angrier. Some of them define the case as "the biggest disgrace in the history of classic sports" and criticize the sprinters that they have not even apologized to their fans. They define the court decision as a travesty and as another proof that Themis is not blind.