By Darren Kane
It’s a question that has haunted the International Olympic Committee, athletes and sports commentators for half a century: should athletes who were cheated by the state-orchestrated East German doping machine in the 1970s and 1980s now benefit from a rebending of history?
Australian swimmer Michelle Ford is the exemplar of many athletes so affected. She first qualified for the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and competed in the Olympics against the imperious East German squad as a 14-year-old.
Then at the Moscow Olympics four years later, against the background of the Western boycotts, Ford won gold in the 800 metres freestyle by a margin of almost four seconds, with East Germany filling both minor placings.
She finished fourth in the 400 metres freestyle, with East Germany filling the three podium spots and won bronze in the 200 metres butterfly, beaten again by her East German rivals.
Ford was the sole non-Eastern Bloc female gold medallist of those Games, across 13 events. All bar one of the other 12 women’s swimming events had an East German winner, equalling the standout performance by that country’s female swimmers at the 1976 Olympics, with the other women’s swimming gold medallist coming from the Soviet Union.
Michelle Ford celebrates victory at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
In total, East Germany won 26 of the 39 Olympic women’s swimming medals available in Moscow.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent German reunification, the existence of the former East Germany’s secret “State Planning Theme 14.25” was revealed in all its misery. The miracle of East German sporting dominance was no miracle of any kind.
Ten thousand or more mostly unsuspecting athletes, the majority children, were forced to ingest huge doses of anabolic agents.
It remains the most macabre scheme of orchestrated doping in the history of all sport. And yet, the duped athletes from outside East German who were most affected by the program are still petitioning for what they believe to be fair reparations – the reallocation of Olympic medals in events impacted by the participation of doped-up East German opponents.
East German Barbara Krause after winning the women’s 100 metres at the Moscow Olympics in world record time.Credit: AP
In a sense, righting the wrongs of the past seems altogether straightforward. In truth, it’s anything but.
Given the breadth and importance of these issues, today I will look at the historical timeline and context of doping at the Olympics, including the measures introduced by the IOC in the 1960s and 1970s to deal with the threat to “fair” competition.
In two weeks’ time, I’ll deal with the arguments for the IOC repairing the injustices of the past and two weeks after that I’ll discuss the problems associated with the IOC doing anything. All of which will hopefully lead to some sort of reasoned conclusion.
Enhancing sporting performance through supplemental, chemical and medicinal means isn’t new.
The Ancient Greeks were alive to the efficacy of all manner of potions and European footballers were on the cocaine and strychnine a century ago, believing each substance improved on-field prowess.
And it wasn’t just athletes. Western forces on the front lines in World War II were, as a matter of routine, given amphetamines to elevate mood and heighten endurance.
Britain’s Tommy Simpson before he collapsed and died on the slopes on Mont Ventoux in 1967.Credit: UPI
None of this, though, happened in an isolation from risk. To illustrate, during the men’s cycling road race at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, the Danish cyclist Knud Jensen crashed off his bike and died. An autopsy revealed traces of an amphetamine, Ronicol, in his system.
Shocking, but hardly an isolated tragedy. The British cyclist Tommy Simpson zig-zagged, fell and died on his approach to the summit of Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France. Simpson, who was found to have traces of amphetamine in his body, was a household name in the UK and his inglorious and tragic death wasn’t a mere passing blip. It was televised.
The IOC doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but it wasn’t exactly swift to enact rules addressing the increasing scourge of doping. Towards the end of the 1960s, doping had become de rigueur, even if it was dangerous to health and the hypothetical antithesis to fairness in competition. Partly in response to the death of Simpson, the IOC session in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in 1967 resulted in the establishment of the IOC’s Medical Commission and the enacting of the Olympics’ first drug-testing policy.
The actual testing of athletes started at the Mexico City Games the following year. Just one athlete failed, having necked a couple of beers before competing. Alcohol was banned, as was caffeine.
But steroids weren’t, even though they were practically everywhere among athletes in some sports. They wouldn’t be banned until 1976.
Today’s World Anti-Doping Code and associated International Standards run for more than 1000 pages. By contrast, the 1972 iteration of the Olympic Charter, at article 26, sets out the entirety of the IOC’s rules relevant to doping, in force for the Munich Olympics that year. Leaving to one side the special rules for team sports, the IOC’s rules merely stated that an “athlete who in an individual sport has been shown to have used dope is excluded from the Olympic Games”. That’s it.
At the 73rd IOC session in Munich in 1972 the charter established that athletes guilty of doping could have their medals taken away. By the next Games in 1976, the IOC demanded that a prohibited list of substances be prepared.
The Moscow Olympics were the filthiest Games in history.Credit: Russell McPhedran
What I’ve just described is the actual “sophistication” of things, in the mid-1970s. At the 1972 Olympics, 2079 urine tests and 65 blood tests were taken for doping analysis. Seven athletes, across five sports, glowed orange. None represented East Germany. All seven had banned stimulants in their system. No athlete tested positive for steroids, because anabolic agents weren’t banned by the IOC in 1972. Any testing by the IOC for their presence was “unofficial”, because the laboratory methods and technologies were nascent and unreliable.
By 1976, the IOC’s banned list included anabolic agents, such as those favoured by East Germany. Eight athletes in total failed doping tests in Montreal because they had steroids or their metabolites in their system. None of those athletes were swimmers; none were East German.
In 1980 in Moscow, it got worse on paper. Of the 5256 athletes, representing 80 different nations in any of the 21 different sports on the Olympic Program, none failed a doping test. And yet while the Moscow Games were the epitome of “clean” competition, they were the filthiest games in history. The chemists stood victorious; athletes had begun using testosterone and other products the testers didn’t possess the ability to detect.
Examining 1972 events through a 2024 prism is pointless. As I will explain in a fortnight, the East German doping machine was vicious; dominance was its sole purpose. Athletes were cannon-fodder; they were brutalised and transformed into machines.
It’s easy in 2024 to propound the idea that the 1970s East German doped athletes should be sanctioned five decades afterwards, based on how an athlete would be punished in 2024 if they engaged in the same misconduct. But actually, that’s a hard argument.
The 1970s rules, and the circumstances of that time, don’t lend themselves to 2024 justice.
No East German athlete failed an Olympic doping test in 1972, 1976 or 1980. The anabolic agents taken by the thousands of East German athletes in the 1970s and beyond weren’t even banned for the first Games in that period.
The more you think about it, the more vexed this issue becomes.
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