Muted reaction in Greece

The pair escaped all charges related to missing three doping tests, ending an eight-month legal saga that started hours before the Athens Olympic Games' opening ceremony on August 12.

"All laws were scrapped," said the daily Eleftherotypia newspaper. "Kenteris and Thanou get off squeaky clean."

"Innocent," said Ta Nea newspaper in a brief article buried in the sports section.

Kenteris, 31, who won a 200 metres gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games, and Thanou, 30, a 100 metres silver medallist at the same Olympics, had faced a two-year ban from athletics if they had been found guilty of missing tests in Tel Aviv, Chicago and just before the Athens Olympics.

Both sprinters, who are free to race unless the International Association of Athletics Federations lodges an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, were the country's best hopes for a medal in front of a home crowd.

But the affair threw a cloud over the first day of the Games with some Greeks blaming the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for what they believed was a witch hunt against the sprinters to punish Greece for its delayed Olympic preparations.

A Greek athletics disciplinary commission ruled the athletes were merely victims of incorrect procedures in notifying them of doping tests.

But the pair's former coach Christos Tzekos was banned for four years from participating in athletics for his role in the affair.

"Tzekos takes the fall," Eleftherotypia said.

Greeks, who at the time were angry at the way the IOC had handled the case and embarrassed the host nation shortly before the Games, now seemed indifferent to the athletes' fate.

"Both of them should have been found guilty because they embarrassed the country at a time when they should have been extra careful," shopkeeper Stelios Grigoriou said. "But we Greeks forget very quickly."

Taxi driver Yorgos Harlaftsis said: "If the athletes are innocent why did they voluntarily withdraw from the Olympics when this happened? But I guess we will never know what really happened."