Marita Koch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marita_Koch

The 400 m world record run

On 6 October 1985 at the year's World Cup meet, Koch set the current 400 m world record of 47.60 seconds. That time was considered out of reach of the world's best athletes in the first quarter of the 21st century. However, on September 18, 2025 at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone ran a 400 m time of 47.78 seconds in the final, putting her within striking distance of Marita Koch's world record.

Drug use controversy

Koch's achievements, along with the performances of other East German female athletes, have long been under suspicion that they were achieved with the aid of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. These drugs were not detectable at the time. In 1991, German anti-drug activists Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke were able to save several doctoral theses and other documents written by scientists working for the East German drug research programme.

The documents list the dosage and timetables for the administration of anabolic steroids to many athletes of the former DDR, with one of them being Marita Koch. According to the sources, Koch did use the anabolic steroid Oral-Turinabol (4-Chlorodehydromethyltestosterone) from 1981 to 1984 with dosages ranging from 530 to 1460 mg/year.

Berendonk and Franke also discovered a letter allegedly written by Koch, complaining that her rival, Bärbel Wöckel, was receiving higher doses of steroids than her because Wöckel's uncle was president of the pharmaceutical company Jenapharm.