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The story of the secret East German sports doping program of the 1970s and 80s, which won Gold Medals for the communist state at the expense of its athletes' health - especially the women.
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00:00On Secrets of the Dead, at the height of the Cold War, female East German athletes conquered the world.
00:06They were very strong. They were very fast. We thought they were machines.
00:11But the victories were tainted by a state-run steroid program that put national glory above human safety.
00:17It was systematic doping. It was cheating.
00:20Trips, injections, pills. It was abuse.
00:23Today, the doped athletes are paying a heavy price.
00:26Doping for gold on Secrets of the Dead.
00:30Doping for gold on Secrets of the Dead.
01:00The East German girl.
01:03They rose from oblivion and conquered the world.
01:07Oh, and that one's a long, long throw.
01:10A generation of female athletes who seemed to win every event they entered.
01:19In the 1970s, East Germany presented itself as a nation of sports fanatics, healthy members of a socialist paradise.
01:27But beneath the robust surface lay a dark and dangerous secret.
01:34They just banged their shirts. I mean, it looked so odd because they were bigger than some of the men.
01:40Their unusual size and strength were created by a national doping program that demanded victory at all costs.
01:47It was German. It was German. It was orderly. It was written up.
01:53And it came at a terrible price for the women who were forced to participate.
01:59These changes of the physique of a woman, this disastrous bodily hair growth, to have the deepening of the voice.
02:09It was systematic doping. It was cheating.
02:12And you know what? There are consequences when you cheat.
02:15Decades later, with doping once again dominating the news, the athletes are finally speaking out.
02:21Revealing a tale of experimentation, cruelty and intimidation unparalleled in the history of sports.
02:37In 1961, communist East Germany built a wall to stop its citizens from fleeing to the West.
02:45Anyone attempting to defect was shot on sight.
02:48Even planning an escape was grounds for imprisonment.
02:55By the 70s, the Berlin Wall was part of a fortified border that split Germany in two.
03:04Officially, it kept the West out.
03:06But in reality, it kept East German citizens in while their government sought ways to demonstrate communist superiority to the rest of the world.
03:15The life itself was from major Formulae in EU.
03:24Rare glimpses of life behind the wall suggested a sporting revolution.
03:28Talented children were hand-picked for special sports schools.
03:34Coaches and doctors were employed full-time to train them.
03:40Sports festivals became highly anticipated national events.
03:46As a promising ten-year-old, Uta Krause joined the Magdeburg School to be trained as a swimmer.
03:52I had this idea that we'd be doing sport all day. Instead of reading and writing and arithmetic,
03:59we'd spend the whole day dancing, ice-skating, doing gymnastics, swimming.
04:03That was my fantasy, and I thought it was going to be amazing.
04:10Ten-year-old Rika Reinisch left her family to go to the Dresden School as a boarder.
04:17I was over the moon. For me, it was something really amazing. And that's also how they sold it to us.
04:27The student-athletes participated in major sports shows and festivals.
04:31The best of the best got to compete in the Spartacus Games in Leipzig, a showcase of the country's physical health.
04:38I can remember it was really something, to go to the Spartacus Games and especially to be a preiswinner.
04:51Shows like these were carefully choreographed to build support for the socialist state,
04:55and distract the East Germans from the economic boom on the other side of the wall.
05:00Marchers paid homage to leaders who promised them secure jobs and welfare perks as a reward for their athletic prowess.
05:14Successful athletes enjoyed freedoms not available to their fellow citizens.
05:19This was the communist equivalent of fame and fortune.
05:23They became the public face of the German Democratic Republic.
05:26You get to travel abroad to go to capitalist countries. I went to Italy when I was 15.
05:33Going to Italy, that was unheard of. Impossible for the average GDR citizen.
05:41Katerina Bulleen joined the Dynamo Club in Berlin when she was 13.
05:46Two years later, she was playing volleyball for the junior national team.
05:50I had privileges, I got great food. Bananas, oranges, you just couldn't get some normally.
05:59Sometimes I felt embarrassed and would sneak food home with me.
06:03But good food and training were only the beginning.
06:08By 1974, with the Montreal Olympics only two years away, party leaders met with the East German Sports Performance Committee
06:18to decide how best to guarantee gold medals and international glory.
06:22What they came up with was state plan theme 1425.
06:36The protocol was based on the work of chemists and pharmacologists at a secret lab in Leipzig.
06:40For six years, the scientists had been testing male hormones on one of their female Olympic stars, a shot putter named Margita Gummel.
06:51Bolstered by the hormones which were given to her in a pill called oral tyrinobol, Margita improved her throws by more than eight feet between the 68 and 72 games.
07:02Oral tyrinobol, or OT, was an anabolic steroid derived from testosterone.
07:12Produced by the state-run pharmaceutical company Yennefarm, it would now be given to other promising athletes.
07:22OT and other anabolic steroids increase muscle mass and hasten recovery time, allowing athletes to train harder and build up more strength.
07:33And because they are similar to testosterone, they have a greater impact on women who have less real testosterone in their bodies to begin with.
07:46By 1974, Manfred Hupner was the East German sports program's chief doctor.
07:52His job was to ensure that sports doctors across the country receive drugs for their athletes.
07:58To prevent questions, the athletes were not told what pills they were getting.
08:05Club doctors like Ulrich Sunder took care of the distribution.
08:09The third doping just wasn't used. In the GDR, the third doping didn't exist.
08:16These were supporting drugs, they supported training. That made it sound much better.
08:20For the youngest athletes, the pills were slipped in with other, less potent supplements.
08:29We usually got the tablets after very hard-water training sessions.
08:34Vitamin C, Vitamin B, potassium, calcium, magnesium, all kinds of pills. It was a real cup full.
08:44There was an unspoken taboo about asking questions about these things. Because if you ask questions, you were put down with nasty remarks or given a real telling off.
09:00Many of the girls had barely reached puberty when they began receiving the hormone pills. Their parents, too, were kept in the dark.
09:12It was only talked about when the parents themselves asked. And even then they were given evasive answers.
09:18And they didn't ask questions because, of course, they believed that doctors were superversing everything.
09:29So how could there be any serious consequences?
09:33As the 76 Games drew closer, East German expectations were high.
09:403,000 coaches had 10,000 young athletes in their care.
09:43Despite a chronic shortage of hard currency, the government poured money into gymnastics, track and field, cycling, rowing, swimming and volleyball.
09:58And the anabolic steroids continued to flow.
10:02The drugs were now being given to athletes throughout the Olympic training program.
10:06To maximize muscle strength, the steroids were combined with a punishing training regimen.
10:16School, training, school, training. You had no time. In fact, the word free time didn't exist.
10:23Everything was on order. Put on your hat or you'll be punished.
10:26Wear a thermal vest or you'll be punished. After the 1st of October, don't eat ice cream in public or you'll be punished.
10:32The pressure was on. Coaches and doctors were contractually obligated to produce medals.
10:39Each club had clearly defined targets for each sport.
10:43What they had to deliver in World Championships or at Olympic Games.
10:48Afterwards, you took stock.
10:49For instance, in athletics, the club TSC Berlin had to win a gold and a silver medal.
10:57The targets were set right at the start of the Olympic cycle.
11:04As the athletes trained, the scientists at the Sports Institute in Leipzig worked to refine their understanding of the drugs.
11:11They studied athletic performance and the biochemistry of movement, always looking for ways to make the steroids more effective.
11:21Uta Krause remembers the lung capacity test well.
11:24We swimmers hated it. We were given a strange gas mask to wear. The holes went down our backs.
11:33They had to get in the flume and swim and swim against the current until a buzzer went.
11:38It didn't take long before you ran out of air under the mask and your lungs and your muscles and everything hurt.
11:45Ironically, the party used a dose of capitalist incentive to ensure that coaches pushed their athletes to the extremes.
11:56This was the basis for how much coaches were paid.
12:02Because their pay was determined by how well the athletes performed in competition.
12:07It was really exhausting because sometimes you swam till you felt like your arms were dragging along the bottom of the pool.
12:20It was dreadful.
12:23But it paid off. The Montreal Olympics was the first major international test for the GDR's doping program.
12:30And the East German athletes exceeded all expectations.
12:34East Germany won an incredible 40 gold medals. Six more than the powerful Americans.
12:46The female swimmers stood out. East German women won 11 out of 13 events, crushing the U.S. favorites in the pool.
12:57They were very strong women. They were very fast. We thought they were machines.
13:02Here were four of America's best athletes ever put together on a team.
13:08And every single day, the East German women were winning every, every event.
13:14The losses were heartbreaking to the Americans.
13:17And suspicions of East German cheating ran rampant.
13:21The U.S. swimmers only managed one gold in the freestyle relay, the very last race.
13:26We had the four of us women that stood up on those blocks and were not going to be denied a gold medal.
13:33No matter, no matter what.
13:38The Americans got their gold.
13:42But in Berlin, GDR leaders were celebrating a grander victory.
13:45East Germany had excelled on the international stage.
13:52The doping program had worked, and the government was taking vigilant steps to ensure its continued success.
14:00The entire operation was now closely guarded by the Stasi, the East German security police commanded by Soviet-trained Eric Milker.
14:08Sports doctors were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement that forbade them from discussing doping with anyone who had not signed.
14:23Stasi informers watched and listened to ensure adherence to the pledge.
14:35Dr. Rainer Hartwick was a party member and an expert on steroids.
14:40Not surprisingly, his skills were in high demand.
14:43Sport was one area in which this small state, the GDR, could really outrun the rest of the world.
14:53Hartwick joined Yennefarm as head of clinical research.
14:57He liaised with the Leipzig scientists and chief sports doctor Manfred Hupner.
15:02The secrecy was important, because if these things had come out, everyone else would have done it too.
15:08And the GDR would have lost its head start in sport.
15:19Dr. Hartwick was one of more than 3,000 Stasi moles within the sports system.
15:24Scientists, coaches, and even athletes, who secretly reported every move they and their colleagues made.
15:30The web of informers meant the athletes had to be wary of what they said.
15:37Probing questions or dissent were immediately and harshly punished.
15:42Once a girl at the TSC club had dared to say something along the lines of,
15:48what are they doing to us?
15:51She was more skeptical and less innocent than us.
15:54And then I heard that she was going to be dishonorably discharged, kicked out and stripped of everything.
16:00That was really, really terrible.
16:06With hindsight, a dishonorable discharge might have been a small price to pay.
16:11Doctors already knew that the drugs could wreak havoc on the girls' reproductive systems.
16:15They kept the knowledge secret, but began giving doped athletes contraceptives as soon as they hit puberty.
16:22Rika Reinisch was started at age 12.
16:26The doctor explained that I should go on the pill so that my periods would be regular.
16:33It would help my body get used to the menstrual cycle more quickly, which made sense to me.
16:45The birth control pills served two purposes.
16:48They kept the athletes training by giving them regular periods.
16:52And they protected the entire system from the Russian roulette of steroid-induced pregnancy complications.
16:58It was clear. If you're on anabolic steroids, you have to be on the pill as well, because medical literature said that things like deformities or other disorders could occur.
17:15Reproductive problems weren't the only side effects.
17:17The Leipzig doctors were uncovering other risks, including heart disease and liver damage.
17:26We knew that certain liver functions could be affected.
17:32So we did talk about these things, and I'm sure they were discussed by those responsible too, but they were not put off.
17:39The consequences were sometimes deadly.
17:48In 1972, 16-year-old swimmer Jörg Ziefers was found dead in the pool.
17:59Somehow it was never explained or talked about officially.
18:03Later on, we asked the old athletes, and one of them told me that he'd had some kind of cold or infection, and that's why his heart stopped.
18:13But the whole thing remained a bit of a mystery.
18:21At the time, words circulated that Jörg had simply drowned.
18:24It would be decades before the truth was finally uncovered.
18:31First round of this javelin competition, Tessa Sanderson.
18:35Meanwhile, the doping continued.
18:37In 1977, the European Athletics Cup Final in Helsinki looked like another route for the GDR.
18:44British champion Tessa Sanderson lost the javelin competition to her East German rival, Olympic gold medalist Ruth Fuchs.
18:51Ruth Fuchs.
18:55Ruth Fuchs, the leader in the javelin.
18:58She was fast. It's like she was doing everything different than everybody else was.
19:02You know, she'd come around the corner with a javelin medalist and blah blah!
19:06And the aggression she had in her throes was just phenomenal.
19:10Ilona Slupianek.
19:11But then came a setback for the East Germans.
19:1620-year-old shot putter Ilona Slupianek failed a drug test.
19:21The doping program was plunged into crisis.
19:25Standard GDR protocol required that doping be curtailed two weeks prior to competition.
19:36Enough time for the athletes' bodies to eliminate all traces of the drugs.
19:41But driven by the need to churn out winners, coaches had been handing out pills until the very last minute.
19:47In East Berlin, it was decreed that from then on athletes would be pre-screened before they left for international events.
19:55Better they be discovered at home than on the world stage.
20:02Urine samples were sent to a lab near Dresden.
20:05If their tests came back positive, athletes would be scratched from the upcoming competition.
20:11The athletes were told that the pre-screening would protect them from false accusations by jealous competitors.
20:20The story was always the same.
20:23There were nasty capitalist athletes who were using doping drugs to get ahead.
20:28And back then I thought, that's terrible because it's not about fairness anymore then, is it?
20:32It would never have crossed my mind that they were putting things in our food and our shots.
20:39We were so trusting.
20:43The pre-screening test results were communicated directly to Chief Sports Doctor Manfred Hupner.
20:53Code numbers for each athlete meant only Hupner knew who they were.
20:56In Dresden, Rika Reinisch was showing remarkable talent in the backstroke.
21:10She was assigned to Uwe Neumann, the school's leading coach, who quickly became like a father to her.
21:15He'd shown me, said, if you have problems, if you have concerns, you can come to me anytime.
21:23I'm here for you, I'm here for your concerns, for your worries, etc.
21:32What Rika didn't know, was that Neumann was a Stasi informer.
21:35He told his handler that Rika was one of his top hopes for the 1980 Olympic Games.
21:48The drugs and training were working.
21:51But Rika, and many of the other girls, were noticing some strange changes in their bodies.
21:56I put on weight very quickly, 10-15 kilos within a few months.
22:06What astonished me and frightened and confused me, was that I was swimming much faster,
22:11when my body was actually heavier and more cumbersome.
22:14The steroids helped the athletes train longer and harder, increasing their muscle mass.
22:25The transformations were dramatic.
22:30My God, child, you've got fat, and what's happened to your voice?
22:34Rika, is that you? What a deep voice you've got.
22:38My nose became huge. Then my hands. During puberty, my hands changed a lot.
22:46My nickname was Toilet Seat.
22:51Sometimes I couldn't fit into any trousers, because my thighs were so big.
22:55But I put it down to those 50 hours of training I did.
22:58Dr. Hupner also started getting reports about unusual hair growth.
23:13He examined one girl himself, reporting to the Stasi that she had excessive hair on her face,
23:19in her thighs, and below her navel.
23:21Dr. Hupner recommended that swimmers with deep voices be barred from giving interviews,
23:31and banned from jobs where their voices could be heard.
23:36Molecular biologist Werner Franke has studied the reports of the East German doctors.
23:41They document disturbing genital abnormalities, in addition to the hair growth.
23:45They have, for example, clitoris growth, body hair growth, male-type hair growth, on the back, for example, or up on the forefront.
23:57The consequences of the drug use were obvious, disturbing, and sometimes life-threatening.
24:02But athletes were never told the cause of their health problems.
24:12Instead, they were simply dropped from the sports system if their bodies broke down.
24:18Uta Krause had her sights set on the Olympic team.
24:22But in response to her doping-related weight gain, she developed an eating disorder and failed to qualify.
24:27It was a bitter blow.
24:28The Olympics had a special magic for all young people back then, and for me particularly.
24:39So it was very hard for me to understand that I couldn't do it anymore.
24:46Uta wasn't the only swimmer to drop out.
24:52Verena Rosberg was also an Olympic hopeful.
24:55But she struggled with the constant pressure of training.
25:04Some days would be good, other days she would say the coach wasn't happy with us.
25:08It was always up and down.
25:10They were just children after all.
25:16Verena was good friends with Rika Reinisch.
25:19They often spent time together after training.
25:21You know, we talked about boys, fashion, music.
25:26We talked about everything, but never about training.
25:30Despite the hard training, Verena's times failed to improve, and she quit swimming just before the 1980 Moscow Games.
25:3916 years later, at age 32, she died of breast cancer.
25:46She left behind two young children and many questions.
25:50Rika has always wondered if there was a connection between Verena's swimming and her early death.
25:55She believes the cancer could have been caused by the anabolic steroids that Verena and the others were forced to ingest.
26:05We did know that they were getting something, and Verena, I can't remember when exactly, but she always talked about vitamin drinks.
26:23Because she probably didn't know any different.
26:26Copies of coach Uwe Neumann's Stasi reports show that he held both Rika and Verena in high regard.
26:36They were his most promising young swimmers.
26:39Verena joined the training group as a new member who, as a very active swimmer, developed very favorably over the past few years.
26:47The Stasi files also reveal that Verena, Rika and other top swimmers had been heavily doped.
26:55But could the drugs have caused Verena's cancer?
26:59Maria Rosberg hopes an analysis of tissue from her daughter's tumor will provide an answer.
27:04If the suspicion that the doping could have actually triggered the cancer is correct, that would be terrible for me.
27:15By the late 70s, East German athletics were thriving, and party leaders boasted of political stability and economic growth.
27:30But beneath the veneer of prosperity, citizens faced severe shortages of basic consumer goods.
27:37As times got tough, the Stasi tightened its grit on the population.
27:45With the 1980 Olympics approaching, the state once again expected its top athletes to spark nationalist fever with their success.
27:58The pressure was especially intense at the Stasi's own Dynamo Sports Club in Berlin, where Katarina Bulleen lived and trained.
28:07Katarina broke a bone in her foot, but the team doctor insisted she get back to practice before the cast was even off her leg.
28:15She stormed in and completely overruled the hospital doctor. She ordered what had to be done and then I had to be back on the court.
28:24No medals, no money. If an athlete who could have won gold was injured two weeks before the game, that was tough luck for the coach. He would get zilch. It meant four years of hard work for nothing.
28:40It's taken a month for the relay of 5000 runners to bring the flame from Olympia in Greece to Moscow.
28:49The pressure paid off and the victories arrived in droves. With the US boycotting the games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the East Germans won more medals than any other nation but the Russians.
29:03Once again, East German swimmers dominated, setting six world records. 15-year-old Rika Reinisch won three golds.
29:13When I stood on the podium after the 100-meter backstroke, I stood there right at the top and thought, you really are an Olympic winner. I couldn't really grasp what that meant. I could have embraced the entire world.
29:27Katarina also tasted success. The East German volleyball team made it to the finals for the first time, though they had to settle for silver.
29:42Well, I still get goosebumps today. It's an experience that stays with you. It sends that you forget all the pain, all the sweat. It's really rewarding because you are getting international recognition from millions of people.
29:58Moscow labs tested all competitors for banned drugs, but not one failed. The East Germans had learned their lesson, stopping the use of oral steroids long enough before the games to ensure clean tests.
30:16The GDR doctors replaced the pills with injections of pure artificial testosterone, which kept hormone levels high.
30:28They knew current tests couldn't differentiate between natural testosterone and artificial, so their athletes couldn't get caught.
30:37Wilhelm Schentzer worked at the Olympic Committee's leading anti-doping lab in West Germany. They had a good idea what was going on.
30:46In the 70s and 80s, there were no doping controls outside competitions. So people used to dope with hard steroids like metendinone and stonozolol in the run-up to competitions.
30:58They stopped taking these in time and switched to testosterone immediately ahead of the games.
31:05Rika had heard about male hormones from foreign athletes, but had no idea she herself was taking them, even though some of her older teammates seemed better informed.
31:15The first time, it was crazy. It was during the Olympic Games, where older athletes were making jokes about it, saying, oh, it's time to go and get our shots.
31:27And ignorant as I was, I went and refused to have the jet before the 4x100m relay.
31:36And afterwards, my coach came and said, Rika, either you let them give you the stuff or your four years of training have been for nothing.
31:45And that's when I knew that something wasn't right.
31:53Katarina too was being pumped with drugs. The doctors said she needed them to cope with her injuries.
31:59Drips, injections, pills, it was all normal, nothing strange about it. And I wouldn't have known what to ask because I wasn't sceptical at all.
32:12After the games were over, the side effects began to catch up with her.
32:17Suddenly, we were growing beards, and things got really bad after the Olympics. I became really aggressive, probably, because we weren't being doped anymore.
32:28Now I know that this was also a withdrawal symptom.
32:32Back in Berlin, party leaders celebrated once again. Chairman Honecker gave out awards for service to the fatherland.
32:50But the athletes were beginning to pay for their victories. The hormones were taking their toll on Rika Reinisch's still-developing teenage body.
32:57I had inflamed ovaries every three months until it became a chronic infection. Sometimes the pain was so bad I couldn't swim anymore.
33:08At age 16, Rika collapsed during a competition. Her parents took her to an outside gynecologist, who gave them an ultimatum.
33:19If your daughter wants to have children someday and wants to grow up healthy, she should stop competitive sports now.
33:28Rika's family took dramatic action. She was quickly extricated from the influence of her coach and mentor.
33:36My mother went to the pool and screamed her head off at Uwe Neumann. We weren't even allowed to say what we knew.
33:45From your clutches, she said. I will rescue my daughter from your clutches. The swimming pool went dead quiet. Everyone around us was taken aback.
33:55That was, so to speak, my last official deed in the swimming pool.
33:58By the 1980s, steroid use was growing throughout the sports world. And scientists were fighting a constant battle to catch up with ever more sophisticated doping techniques.
34:14At the Pan American Games in 1983, organizers asked West German scientists to set up a lab to test for illegal drug use. The results were startling.
34:27And the interesting thing was that, specifically at these games, a large number of positive tests became public. At first, we mostly called wakelifters, but then also American athletes in particular.
34:43So, after three days, half the U.S. team left. And then they were asked by journalists at the airport why they were leaving. Apparently, they'd all caught a cold.
34:56Steroids were becoming pervasive, and all athletes were affected. Javelin thrower Tessa Sanderson was beaten time and again by admitted steroid user Ruth Fuchs.
35:07It wasn't until the 84 games in L.A., which the East Germans boycotted, that Tessa finally won her gold. She did it clean, but even she was tempted.
35:17I think some of the British athletes did come under some pressure, because, you know, people approached me.
35:22Had I not had the grilling that I'd had from my coach, had I not been really overly confident in my talent, maybe, because I wanted to win so badly, maybe I would have said, well, okay, right, I'll have a go.
35:41The opportunity was present, but there were differences between the East German methods and everybody else's.
35:46Doping in the West was always a clandestine thing. It was in small circles, so it had nothing of the dimension and the thoroughness it had in the East.
36:00Doping in the GDR was different from the doping in the West of the world, but it was also different from the doping in other parts of the East.
36:13It was German. It was orderly. It was bureaucratic. It was written up.
36:21Yet despite the bureaucracy, or perhaps because of it, the East Germans were able to keep their doping a secret.
36:32In May of 1985, East Berlin hosted the International Olympic Committee for its 90th General Assembly.
36:39Delegates had no idea that less than 100 miles away in Leipzig, GDR scientists were working harder than ever to cheat the system.
36:48One new drug they developed, called STS-646, caused male characteristics in women at a rate 16 times that of oral terinobol.
37:03STS-646 was never approved for human consumption. Yet for years, it was manufactured by Yennefarm and distributed to athletes through Rainer Hartwick's clinical research department.
37:14I didn't know what these substances did, but then I saw that they were being fed to young people nonetheless.
37:24And for me, that was the point at which I couldn't go along with it anymore.
37:31Hartwick eventually filed a complaint with his Stasi handler.
37:34His criticism caused a stir, but ultimately Chief of Sport Manfred Eivolt insisted the drugs were necessary, and ordered 63,000 additional tablets.
37:53Shop-putter Heidi Krieger could well have been a recipient.
37:55She trained at the same facility as Katerina Bulleen, the Dynamo Club in Berlin.
38:02Heidi won a gold medal with a throw of 69.2 feet at the 1986 European Athletics Championships.
38:12Her medical records show that during the period leading up to the tournament, she was given massive doses of androgenic steroids.
38:18The drugs are called androgenic because they stimulate masculine sexual characteristics.
38:28Heidi Krieger did really get loads of androgenic hormones, more than Ben Johnson got as a male.
38:37So without loads of androgenic hormones, there were no other possibility that in that body the male development took off.
38:47Heidi's body was transformed, though at the beginning, she was slow to truly notice the differences.
38:56For years, she struggled with her sexuality.
38:59Then in 1997, she underwent a sex change operation and changed her name to Andreas.
39:05She didn't feel she had much choice.
39:07I didn't find it unlikely or particularly unpleasant because probably I was already caught up in this male-female thing.
39:17I chose to have surgery because I couldn't live in the body of a woman anymore.
39:25Heidi's training regimen in the mid-80s was so ambitious. She was lifting more than most male athletes.
39:36These are my training diaries from 1986. I once worked out that I'd lifted more than a hundred tons in two weeks.
39:43As people noticed the changes in her body, the Dynamo Club became her only refuge.
39:52I stopped going for walks or to the shops because passers-by in the street would call me nasty names like faggot, gay pig.
40:02They picked on me and that's when I said to myself, I'll just stay here in the sports club.
40:09I'll make do with what I've got here because I was so scared of being bullied in the street.
40:14The strain on Heidi's body grew.
40:18She stopped competing before the 1988 Olympics because of irreversible damage to her hips and thighs.
40:25She was only 22.
40:27For the next decade, Heidi battled her body.
40:31Not until she became Andreas did she get more comfortable in her own skin.
40:36In 2002, after a two-year romance, Andreas married ex-swimmer Uta Krause.
40:43Both continued to have health problems stemming from their steroid use.
40:46Uta still wrestles with bulimia and depression.
40:54Katharina Boulin had to stop playing volleyball in 1981 because of her injuries.
41:03Like Andreas, she has struggled to come to terms with her sexual identity.
41:09I didn't start to look like a man overnight, it happened gradually.
41:12And whether I wore a dress or a skirt, makeup or jewelry, it got verse and verse.
41:25They called me a transvestite or gay and it shocked me.
41:31Today, Katharina no longer tries to conceal her altered physique.
41:34She's given up on feminine clothes.
41:37It is very masculine, but I've had to deal with it.
41:41But I am still tortured by it because people never see me as Katharina.
41:46This former Olympic athlete has had 13 operations and lives in constant pain.
41:52Missing a kneecap, she struggles even to walk.
41:55Her injuries are typical of many doped female athletes whose bodies cannot support the stresses from the steroid assisted training.
42:03Here you come to a working load which would not be thinkable without these androgenic drugs.
42:13Your body, your joints, your tendons, etc. are not built for such loads, especially in the female body.
42:21The East Germans knew the risks, but they continued to dope their athletes until bigger issues overtook them.
42:30Just before 10 o'clock, the moment Berliners have waited 28 years for.
42:35In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, bringing an abrupt end to the oppressive socialist state.
42:41As citizens ransacked the secret Stasi buildings, the extent of its control over daily life became clear.
42:53And the truth about the Olympic doping scandal slowly began to emerge.
42:58Today, the evidence of GDR doping still lies in the old Stasi headquarters.
43:04Over 20 years, an estimated 10,000 athletes were doped, most without their knowledge.
43:09When Katarina requested her medical files, she discovered the doctors had left many of her injuries untreated.
43:17Reading these files made my world fall apart.
43:22You can't imagine how deeply it hurts to be abused for years, to realize now that they lied to me and betrayed my trust.
43:29I was so, so furious.
43:31Document after document showed that the Stasi covered up not only the sophisticated doping program, but also its impact on the health of the athletes.
43:43For US swimmer Wendy Beaulieu, a free and united Germany meant she could finally dig up the truth about the East German women who beat her in Montreal.
43:54The freedom to be able to go from one side to the other side on a train and not to have to go through that.
44:05I can't imagine what that was like for people.
44:08For more than three decades, Wendy has longed for the truth and perhaps even an apology for her lost medals and glory.
44:16It was all such a big secret. We didn't know what this country was about. We didn't know what the Summers were about. We didn't know what the Olympics meant to them.
44:26Because from our perspective, it couldn't possibly have meant to them what it meant to us.
44:32East German freestyler Petra Toomer disagrees. She won two golds at the Montreal Games. And even though she knows now that she was doped, she still believes her victories were well earned.
44:48Hello.
44:50Hello.
44:52You look so good.
44:54I just love that.
44:56Time has aged the two rivals, but the competitiveness is still there.
44:59Really why I came here, as Americans, 30 years ago we were told that the entire East German team were on steroids. They all were on steroids. That's what we heard before Montreal.
45:20It is difficult to answer this question.
45:23I was very young back then when I started swimming and when I joined the national team. I didn't know anything back then. It wasn't clear to me then the extent of what they were doing with us.
45:36Yes.
45:38I also have a question. You trained as hard as we did. Did you use anything other than training?
45:43No, no, definitely not. I know our 23 women on our United States Olympic team in 76 was not a part of any of that.
45:54Had we been, we probably would have won.
45:56Yes, yes, yes, it's okay.
45:58I'm kind of thinking.
46:02I won't allege that anyone took anything.
46:07But it's easy to say today that nothing was taken, because there is no proof.
46:12I won't let anyone take this success away from me. This hard-won success. I spent many years in performance sports. I loved swimming and had to work hard for it.
46:27Despite all that's been revealed about the clandestine doping program, Petra is reluctant to condemn her coaches and doctors. But she has no long-term damage from the drugs.
46:37That's you all over.
46:42Others aren't so lucky. Only now is the full scope of steroid-related health problems finally coming to light.
46:51Sports historian Gisela Spitzer has just completed a study of more than 50 East German athletes. The results corroborate earlier findings and catalog long-term damage ranging from cancer, depression and eating disorders to liver and heart disease.
47:07One of four in this group has very big heart problems. A big part has changes of the liver. More than 10% of this group have cancer and it was possible to find new side effects which are not known.
47:26Side effects like self-mutilation, miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects.
47:34Rika Reinisch has a heart condition and has miscarried twice.
47:37You're in pain. Abdominal pain. And then it starts to come out. You're helpless. You can't do anything to change it. It just happens. Something is lost. A life that was supposed to grow inside you is suddenly lost. It's the worst thing that can happen to a woman.
47:57But at least Rika herself survived. An autopsy report found after East Germany's collapse revealed that 16-year-old swimmer Jörg Seifers had been suffering from an enlarged heart and liver problems when he drowned.
48:13The Stasi had deleted his files. Pages from the unofficial supporters are missing. So in that time, I personally think they destroyed the data to avoid to have a doping debt.
48:30Other deaths like that of swimmer Verena Rosberg are still under investigation. Even before she died of breast cancer in 1996, research had shown that cancer can be triggered by anabolic steroids.
48:49But Verena's mother is still waiting to find out whether her tumor showed signs of being steroid induced.
48:54Unfortunately, the results are inconclusive. If there had been any molecular evidence of a connection, it was destroyed by the cancer.
49:10But even without the smoking gun, Professor Franca believes there is a link. He feels that because of the risk, the doped athletes should have been better monitored.
49:19She should have been supervised, you know, by yearly diagnostic checkups. So with careful eyes. So that a potential tumor that grows is discovered much earlier. And that, of course, is life saving.
49:33When you learn like this, that they gave it to young children, as young as 14 and 15, it's really, it's really criminal. I can't call it anything else.
49:57Three years after Verena died, her coach, Uwe Neumann, was one of 70 people convicted for illegal doping.
50:12But only a few, including sports chief Manfred Eivold and chief sports doctor Manfred Hupner, have actually been brought to public trial.
50:21Many of these medical doctors or coaches had one simple motive, and the motive was to earn money, to be important, to be someone. And they had no risk because they were not responsible to the assets. And the study covered them.
50:39None of those convicted went to prison. And only two have ever spoken publicly about their role in the doping. One of those two is Ulrich Sünder.
50:48We feared that we'd be disgraced, because what we'd been doing was against doctors' ethics, and against the principles of medicine.
50:59Even those responsible, those in the public eye, like Herr Ewald and Herr Hupner, got off relatively lightly.
51:09Despite all the evidence that has come out, many communities still value their medals and cherish their records.
51:19Athletes like Rika, who came forward to testify, remain in the minority.
51:24Rika, now married with two children, is not popular at her old club.
51:28This is where my photo was. Mine and Birkutwaldus have gone.
51:35Probably because I blew the whistle.
51:40Other athletes are less critical.
51:46Javelin thrower Ruth Fuchs has openly admitted to using steroids, but doesn't denounce the system that made her a star.
51:54Today, Fuchs is an MP in the German parliament.
51:59Her longtime rival, Tessa Sanderson, believes that no matter how sophisticated drug testing gets,
52:05if there's an incentive to win, there will always be cheating.
52:09Recent headlines bear her out.
52:11Though there may never be another doping program on par with the East Germans,
52:17drugs continue to haunt professional sports.
52:20I think people will try and beat the system always, always, always.
52:25As long as commercial involvement is there, and that's big time now for manufacturers and sporting manufacturers, they will try.
52:32Individuals who are taking performance-enhancing drugs, where does it end?
52:37Because you have to look in the mirror every single day, and you have to know that you did this on your own.
52:44In the 70s and 80s, doping propelled a small nation from obscurity to the global stage.
52:51But for many of the athletes who were sacrificed on the altar of victory,
52:56the experience has left nothing but tarnished metals and painful scars.
53:00Stay tuned for scenes from next week's Secrets of the Dead.
53:07But first...
53:09On NOVA...
53:11Try it without the CD, please, Adam.
53:13The mystery of music...
53:15It feels like my brain was a puzzle, and all of a sudden everything just kind of clicked.
53:19And the brain...
53:21I thought that the only reason that I was allowed to live was because of the music.
53:25Pulling power from the music, liberating them.
53:29Can music unlock the mysteries of the brain?
53:32On NOVA Musical Minds.
53:34Tomorrow at 9, 8 Central, on most PBS stations.
53:38The iconic moments that have shaped our world.
53:42It stretches human history way back.
53:44The fine line between fiction and fact.
53:47That legend just doesn't stand up against reality.
53:50Discoveries that bring the dead back to life.
53:52Forensics that create clarity from chaos.
53:57The past gets rewritten when science and history collide.
54:02Secrets of the Dead.
54:11Reopen Investigations of the Past at PBS Online.
54:15History is revealing its forgotten secrets at PBS.org.
54:18This Secrets of the Dead episode is available on DVD for $24.99 plus shipping.
54:26To order, call 1-800-336-1917.
54:31Or write to the address on your screen.
54:48Have a great day today with themäßig and industry-life Marvel back.
54:54How about a character that's to USD in the South?
54:56Of all careers,úphu русic regulations and history pepper.
55:00Inside and after, of all careers of the years.
55:03Disney has to read over the past 24- Angela.
55:06Here is Facebook at the drink.
55:08The
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