IOC may have awarded walker Jared Tallent gold but they still haven’t tried to write wrongs of doping programs of previous eras, writes Robert Craddock

JARED Tallent will rightly get his gold, but the East German who cheated Raelene Boyle in Munich entered Germany’s Sporting Hall of Fame, writes Robert Craddock.

THERE are times when life is too unfair for words.

While a disgraced Russian drug user has rightfully been forced to hand over his gold medal to Australia’s Jared Tallent, the shameless cheat who beat Raelene Boyle recently got admitted to her national hall of fame.

Welcome to the shady, crazy, corrupt world of Olympic drug taking.

Australian walker Tallent will next month receive the 50km walking gold from the London Olympics because of the disqualification of Russian Sergey Kirdyapkin for taking performance enhancing drugs.

It is a satisfying feel-good story. But if Olympic officials start puffing their chests out about righting the wrongs of the past, we may have to ask to leave the room.

At the 1972 Olympics, Australian track superstar Boyle won the silver medal in the 100m and 200m sprints behind East Germany’s Renate Stecher who, like most of her teammates, was doped up to the gills by that nation’s systematic drug program.

Far from having her deeds discredited by the grim findings, Stecher was, a few years back, admitted to Germany’s Sporting Hall of Fame.

You read that right. Fame not shame.

History had been airbrushed.

“It is a bloody joke really,’’ said Boyle on Sunday, “particularly all the documentation is there revealing how they cheated.

“It’s great for Jared and Australia that it is happening but for every story like his there are hundreds of athletes who should have got medals.

“Swimmers like Lisa Curry. She might not have won the gold but she certainly would have won Olympic medals and she won nothing.’’

Curry was a gold medal machine at her three Commonwealth Games but at three Olympics she failed to win a medal after running headlong into the drugged up Chinese swimmers, with voices as deep as Barry White and the muscles of Popeye after a can of spinach.

Raelene Boyle looks at her silver medal as she stands next to East Germany’s Renate Stecher on the dais in Munich.

The Chinese doping program was so out of control they won 12 of 16 gold medals at the 1994 World Championships.

East Germany’s program netted them more than 500 medals in winter and summer Olympics between 1968 and 1988.

With both regimes there were later admissions of guilt but few regrets or heartfelt apologies.

“When I met Renate (in retirement), there was no apology because she did not think she did anything wrong, despite the fact that I know she requested to come off the drugs she was on between the ’72 and ’76 Games because she wanted to have normal children in the future,’’ Boyle said.

“I know of one East German athlete who had so much testosterone pumped into her system she had a sex change because she could not live as a female again.’’

Such was the brutality of the East German doping system that it left a train of physical and emotional carnage with athletes suffering heart conditions, infertility and chronic depression.

Children as young as nine were pumped with steroids and one weightlifter, Roland Schmidt, took so many drugs he grew size 36DD breasts and later had an operation to have them removed.

You would think it could not get much worse than that. Sadly it has not got much better.