Sex, Drugs, Bronze’n'Gold

East Germany’s ‘Wonder Girls’ were the most successful Olympics team ever.

At the 1980 Olympics, East German girls won 11 of the 13 swimming events. Wunderkind Rica Reinisch won three medals at the age of 15. The DDR – a country of just 17 million people – could outsport both the US and the Soviet Union.

But . . . something wasn’t quite right about the girls. That’s what US athlete Wendy Boglioli remembers. ‘The girls were huge – and they had beards’, she said. At the time, she was panned by the press for being bitchy and a sore loser.

Now it’s common knowledge that the DDR babes were on a programme of anabolic steroids.

It worked . . . and how. Olympic records set by the babes stand to this day. So do the after-effects of the drugs they took:  cancers, swollen livers, miscarriages, identity crises -  as well as a hugely enlarged clitoris and nymphomania.

Some girls gave birth to deformed children.  A shot putter called Heidi changed sex altogether. (She’s now a guy called Andreas Krieger.)

The tablets they took were Oral-Turinabol, a steroid containing testosterone. It is ideal for athletes, increasing muscle-mass and speeding recovery from injury. The scientists from East Germany’s Jenapharm, who manufactured the drug, worked closely with the trainers (and the Stasi) monitoring performance and analysing results.

Importantly, the scientists knew exactly how long traces remained in the body, which is how girls with Tarzan biceps (like Kornelia Ender, pictured right) always passed doping tests – to everyone’s surprise.

In 2005, the girls began a court case against Jenapharm (the firm became Schering after re-unification) for damages. To its shame, the pharmaceutical firm was unrepentant and flatly denied its involvement with a covert Doping-For-Gold programme. Sadly, many girls were told only that the little blue pills were vitamins.

East Germany has shown a reluctance to come clean about the past, but after a four year case Jenapharm finally owned up and settled out of court. It’s believed 170 athletes won damages totalling 4 million, but it’s likely hundreds more were affected.

Would they have won without the drugs? Maybe not by a country mile, but certainly the East German Olympic Programme was formidable. It took any kid with athletic prowess from school and put them on a conveyor belt of accelerated and sophisticated training.  Their families were simply told to forget academic studies -  they were needed by the State.

Example: for the Mexico Olympics, everyone from canoeists to cyclists were flown to the Caucasus for altitude training. Meanwhile, the DDR invested 50m in computer timing and athletic simulation as early as the Seventies – light years in advance of other countries.

So, perhaps reality is not a big shift from history. Though it’s true that the girls wouldn’t have needed to shave every day.

More: A video docu here, (50 mins) made a few years ago before the legal settlement

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