The Olympic hierarchy will soon find themselves the subject of a lawsuit after banning Ekaterini Thanou from running in the 100 metres. The potential for embarrassment or worse was made clear when the Greek’s lawyer stated: “I will leave no stone unturned until I bring these people to justice.”

The IOC executive board decided yesterday that it was not obliged to let Thanou, who has served a ban for missing three drugs tests, compete in Beijing. Giselle Davies, the IOC director of communications, said: “There were a whole string of events in this sorry tale and these resulted in a scandalous saga that overshadowed the Athens Games.” Those events included an alleged motorcycle crash, the arrest of seven doctors for making false statements and a continuing perjury case against Thanou and Konstantinos Kenteris.

However, Thanou is refusing to go quietly and her lawyer, Dr Gregory Ionnidis, last night launched a scathing counter-attack on the IOC. “There are rules in this society and no one is above the law,” he said.

Bizarrely, it means that four years after the scandal that rocked the Games to its core, two Greece sprinters are again the centre of attention after being kicked out of sport’s biggest party. Anastasios Gousis, the 200 metres runner, tested positive for methyltrienolone. However, even though the test came within the Olympic period, it was conducted by the Greek anti-doping authority, Eskan, and so technically does not count as tainting the Games.

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• Thanou banned after drugs scandal

Thanou, 33, was named in the Greece Olympic team and had been planning to travel to Beijing on Wednesday. Now she will remain at home and plot a legal battle. “The IOC has sent the wrong message to society and brought the Olympic Movement into disrepute,” Ionnidis claimed. “It is simply unfair and discriminatory to allow specific athletes with bans for the use of prohibited substances to participate in the Olympics, but not Ms Thanou, who has settled out of court and had no official decision against her.”

The case of Thanou and Kenteris left the darkest cloud over Athens. They attended an IOC hearing during those Games and surrendered their accreditation. Thanou is now claiming she did so under duress after being threatened by IOC officials. Ionnidis promised to reveal more details in the next few days because he said the public has a right to know the truth. It is believed there are tape recordings of the conversations that took place at the Athens Hilton.

“The IOC have also showed to the world that they are entitled not to follow their own rules and principles of the Olympic Charter,” Ionnidis said, adding that there was no legal basis for the “degree of discrimination applied”. The IOC, which must still decide whether to upgrade Thanou’s silver medal from Sydney to gold after the Marion Jones scandal, cited rules 23.21 and 45 in deciding it had no obligation to allow Thanou to compete.