Recent headlines revealing illegal performance-enhancing drug use among celebrity athletes have flooded the press and mired the court system. While these athletes’ public downfall may be their own undoing, imagine if they faced the consequences of these drugs without ever knowing they took them. Imagine if these individuals were unknowingly involved in a government-sponsored secret doping program, leaving them with tarnished honors, broken bodies and damaged psyches.
Thirteen/WNET New York’s SECRETS OF THE DEAD: Doping for Gold, premiering Wednesday, May 7 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings) investigates one of the most controversial and alarming cover-ups in the history of the Olympic Games – East Germany’s organized use of steroids and testosterone to bolster its athletes’ performance from 1960s through the 1980s. Narrated by actor Liev Schreiber (CSI, Manchurian Candidate), the 60-minute documentary reveals the remarkable lives of the women of the East German Olympic team during the country’s systematic doping decades, and the terrible suffering they have had since.
“We knew this was going to be a timely film,” said Jared Lipworth, executive producer of SECRETS OF THE DEAD. “With the Olympics coming up this summer and steroid scandals rocking baseball, track & field, cycling and seemingly every other sport, we felt now was the perfect time to explore the biggest doping coverup of all time. This wasn’t an athlete deciding to ‘roid up,’ it was a government putting its citizens in jeopardy for international glory and gold.”
In the seventies, female German athletes came from nowhere to dominate international sport. In the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, the world took notice as East Germany, a relatively small country with few previous Olympic wins, triumphed with an impressive 40 gold medals. The women’s swim team alone won 11 of 13 swim events, an unprecedented feat.
The secret to their success would not come to light for decades: a state-sponsored doping program. Under the auspices of East Germany’s elite sports federation, headed by Manfred Ewald and monitored by the Ministry of State Security known as Stasi, the government used doping as part of a deceptive master plan to secure international prestige through success in sports. Girls as young as 12 were recruited from across the country, and without their knowledge, were regularly administered untested steroids and male hormones as part of their training. Doping For Gold digs deep into the secretive Cold War world of these East German athletes, examining what drugs they were given, how they were distributed and what physical and mental damage they left behind.
Doping For Gold gives these exploited athletes — and their Olympic competitors — a chance to tell their story. Women like U.S. swimmer Wendy Boglioli, who faced frustration during the Montreal Olympics as she and her American teammates, who were favored to win at the Games, continually lost their contests. She describes her opponents in the film this way:
“They were very strong women; they were very fast; we thought they were machines. Here (we) were, four of America’s best athletes ever put together on a team, and every single day the East German women were winning every, every event.”
The film provides a platform for Boglioli to actually face one of her rivals, three decades after the Games, and share their very different perspectives with viewers and each other..
Ultimately, Olympic success came at a disturbing price for many of the German athletes, specificially side effects ranging from male-type hair growth and deepened voices to liver and heart disease, depression, infertility, miscarriages, and even death.
East German swimmer Katharina Bullin describes the before and after of the drug use in the film:
“(During training) Drips, injections, pills, it was all normal. Nothing strange about it and I wouldn’t have known what to ask because I wasn’t skeptical at all.
I didn’t start to look like a man overnight, it happened gradually. I wasn’t really aware of it myself but it was obvious to everyone else. And whether I wore a dress or a skirt, make up or jewelry, it got worse and worse. They called me a transvestite or gay, and it shocked me.”
For one athlete, shot putter Heidi Krieger, the progressive physical transformations left her so confused about her sexual identity that she eventually opted to undergo a complete sex change.
The secrecy and deception to the East German public and their long-suffering athletes lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when records documenting the doping program were finally uncovered.
Astounded and angry to find that they had unknowingly been doped, many athletes have spoken out about their training, and sued the officials who abused them. But despite the damning evidence, other doped athletes remain proud of their accomplishments, unwilling to criticize their trainers and former government for fear of upsetting their own places in history.
But some fellow athletes like Biolgi see the scenario quite clearly. “It was systematic doping, it was cheating and, you know what, there are consequences when you cheat,” she says in the film.
SECRETS OF THE DEAD: Doping for Gold is a Brook Lapping Productions for Thirteen/WNET New York. Alison Rooper is producer and director. Phil Craig is executive producer for Brook Lapping Productions. At Thirteen, Jared Lipworth is executive producer. William R. Grant is executive-in-charge.
