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.

QOSHE - Why the most macabre doping scheme in Olympic history went unpunished - Darren Kane
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Why the most macabre doping scheme in Olympic history went unpunished

25 14
29.03.2024

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........

© The Sydney Morning Herald


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