Have track and field events been scarred forever by doping? Part 2

Former German shot putter Andreas Krieger, who competed as a woman (Heidi Krieger) on the East German athletics team, speaks to an AFP reporter in his shop in Magdeburg September 22, 2009. Krieger, who was given massive amounts of anabolic steroids by his then trainers and ended up having a sex change in 1997, took gold at the 1986 European Championships in Athletics. Ever since his retirement in 1997, he has been campaigning against doping in sports, advocating harsher sentences for offenders.

Here is the first part of the series.

Jarmila Kratochvilova, of erstwhile Czechoslovakia, ran 800 metres in just 1: 53.28 minutes in 1983. Amazingly, even after 30 years of her setting that incredible world record, no one has even come close to breaking it. It isn’t surprising that just like other athletes, she has denied taking any banned substances.

The same can be said about the shot-putter Lisovskaya, of Soviet Union, whose record of hurling the shot-put to a distance of 22.63 metres, way back in ’87, is well out of reach of present day athletes. The world record for discus throw seems to be set by an alien, as in ’88, Garbiele Reinsch of East Germany set it with a jaw-dropping best of 76.8 m.

The great shot-putter of the 90s, Astrid Kumberness, who won gold medals in World championships as well as at the ’96 Athens Olympics, didn’t even have an iota of chance of breaking the world record or the Olympic record during her entire career. She won the gold medal in Athens in ’96 with a best of 19.93 m. Every time Kumberness competed in a world event and looked at the world record flashing on the giant screen, it must have been disheartening for her to know that attempting to break the record was always going to be a futile exercise.

In the 90s, a string of Chinese female athletes, more popularly known as Ma’s army, hit the headlines by breaking one world record after another in middle and long-distance running. The likes of Qu Yunxa and Wang Junxia obliterated strong fields in the early 90s by setting mind-boggling times. In an unprecedented move, the controversial coach, Ma Juneran, was sacked by Chinese authorities just before the 2000 Sydney Olympics, as six of his athletes were found to be using banned drugs.

The most tragic case was that of Heidi Krieger, again from East Germany, as from the tender age of 16, she was given high doses of drugs without her knowledge. In 1997, the East German was forced to go for a sex reassignment surgery, and now is known as Andreas.

A question may arise on everyone’s lips: if drug abuse was so rampant in 80s, and to some extent in the early 90s, why have male athletes continued to break records in the last two decades? For instance, the 100m record has been matched or broken 16 times in the last 25 years by male athletes.

Former British athlete Christina Boxer says, “If you take a male hormone it’s going to have a far greater effect on a female athlete.”

“I ran against athletes I was sure were on drugs; athletes who could not get near their best times once the Berlin Wall came down,” she added.

As the testing methods have improved drastically, it is almost improbable for an athlete to cheat for long these days. But unfortunately, there are still athletes roaming around who try every little trick in the trade to conceal the fact that they are taking banned substances.

It is also sad that these days when a female athlete is about to run a 100m sprint, she knows that even coming close to all those earth-shattering records set in the 80s is practically impossible. It is the sad but bitter truth that every female athlete has to live with during her professional career.