Sporting honour was not the only casualty of the drug Olympics

AS usual, swimming took pride of place during the first week of the Olympics and one of the features has been Germany’s failure to win a gold medal. As of yesterday they were reduced to just one bronze.

That performance was in marked contrast with the three Olympics Games in which the East Germans competed from 1976 to 1988 (they boycotted the Los Angeles Games in 1984). During those three Games they won a total of 31 out of 43 gold medals in the women’s swimming races. They also won 19 silver and 14 bronze medals. Behind the medals was a frightening story that had echoes of Hitler’s demented plans to raise a master race.

In the early 1970s, the East Germans began recruiting thousands of young, talented sports people and moulding them into world-beating swimmers and athletes by feeding them a cocktail of body-building drugs - such as anabolic steroids and hormones - with little knowledge or concern for what they were doing to the health of those young people.