story. ilona slupianek in 1981. east germany closed itself to the sporting world in may 1965. in 1977 the shot-putter ilona slupianek, who weighed 93 kg, failed a test for anabolic steroids at the european cup meeting in helsinki and thereafter athletes were tested before they left the country. at the same time, the kreischa testing laboratory near dresden passed into government control; it reputedly made around 12,000 tests a year on east german athletes but without any being penalised. the international amateur athletics federation (iaaf) suspended slupianek for 12 months, a penalty that ended two days before the european championships in prague. in the reverse of what the iaaf hoped, sending her home to east germany meant she was free to train unchecked with anabolic steroids, if she wanted to, and then compete for another gold medal, which she won. after that, almost nothing emerged from the east german sports schools and laboratories. a rare exception was the visit by the sports-writer and former athlete, doug gilbert of the edmonton sun, who said: dr (heinz) wuschech knows more about anabolic steroids than any doctor i have ever met, and yet he cannot discuss them openly any more than geoff capes or mac wilkins can openly discuss them in the current climate of amateur sports regulation. what i did learn in east germany was that they feel there is little danger from anabolica, as they call it, when the athletes are kept on strictly monitored programmes. although the extremely dangerous side-effects are admitted, they are statistically no more likely to occur than side-effects from the birth control pill. if, that is, programmes are constantly medically monitored as to dosage. other reports came from the occasional athlete who fled to the west – 15 of them between 1976 and 1979. one, the ski-jumper hans-georg aschenbach, said: "long-distance skiers start having injections to their knees from the age 14 because of their intensive training." he said: "for every olympic champion, there are at least 350 invalids. there are gymnasts among the girls who have to wear corsets from the age of 18 because their spine and their ligaments have become so worn... there are young people so worn out by the intensive training that they come out of it mentally blank , which is even more painful than a deformed spine." after the 1990 german reunification, on 26 august 1993 the records were opened and evidence found that the stasi, the state secret police, supervised systematic doping of east german athletes from 1971 until reunification in 1990. doping existed in other countries, says the expert jean-pierre de mondenard, both communist and capitalist, but the difference with east germany was that it was a state policy. the sportvereinigung dynamo (english:dynamo sports club) was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former east germany. many former club officials and some athletes found themselves charged after the dissolution of the country. victims of doping, trying to gain justice and compensation, set up a special page on the internet to list people involved in doping in the gdr. state-endorsed doping began with the cold war of 1947–1991, when every eastern bloc gold represented an ideological victory. from 1974, manfred ewald, the head of east germany's sports federation, imposed blanket doping. at the 1968 summer olympics in mexico city, the country of 17 million collected nine gold medals. four years later the total was 20 and in 1976 it doubled again to 40. ewald was quoted as having told coaches, "they're still so young and don't have to know everything." in july 2000 ewald received a 22-month suspended sentence, to the outrage of his victims. often, doping took place without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. it is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse; one of them, rica reinisch, a triple olympic champion and world record-setter at the 1980 summer olympics, has since had numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts. two former dynamo berlin club doctors, dieter binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 1980, and bernd pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in east berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances. binus was sentenced in august, pansold in december 1998 – both were found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984. virtually no east german athlete ever failed an official drugs test, though stasi files show that many did produce failed tests at kreischa, the saxon laboratory (german:zentrales dopingkontroll-labor des sportmedizinischen dienstes) that was at the time approved by the international olympic committee (ioc), now called the institute of doping analysis and sports biochemistry (idas). in 2005, 15 years after the end of east germany, the manufacturer of the drugs, jenapharm, still found itself involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes. former sport club dynamo athletes daniela hunger and andrea pollack publicly admitted to doping and accused their coaches for being responsible. another former sport dynamo athlete, ilona slupianek, was disqualified for doping. (ilona slupianek failed a test along with three finnish athletes at the 1977 european cup, becoming the only east german athlete ever to be convicted of doping) based on the admission by pollack, the united states olympic committee asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 summer olympics. despite court rulings in germany that substantiate claims of systematic doping by some east german swimmers, the ioc executive board announced that it has no intention of revising the olympic record books. in rejecting the american petition on behalf of its women's medley relay team in montreal and a similar petition from the british olympic association on behalf of sharron davies, the ioc made it clear that it wanted to discourage any such appeals in the future. west germany the 800-page "doping in germany from 1950 to today" study details how the west german government helped fund a wide-scale doping programme. west germany encouraged and covered up a culture of doping across many sports for decades. clemens prokop, head of germany's athletics federation, told reuters television in an interview, "it is a bit of a problem that there is a short version that has been published and that names have not been named." immediately after the 1954 fifa world cup final, rumors emerged that the west german team had taken performance-enhancing substances. several members of the team fell ill with jaundice, presumably from a contaminated needle. members of the team later claimed they had been injected with glucose, and the team physician franz loogen said in 2004 that the players had only been given vitamin c before the game. a leipzig university study in 2010 posited that the west german players had been injected with the banned substance methamphetamine. according to the german olympic sports association (dosb), doping was common in the west german athletes of the 1980s. west german heptathlete birgit dressel died at age 26 due to sudden multiple organ failure, triggered at least in part by long-term steroid abuse. in the newly emerging doping discussion in 2013 after submission of the final report of the anti-doping commission, the former german sprinter manfred ommer accused the freiburg physician armin klümper: "klümper was the largest doper on this planet." china china conducted a state-sanctioned doping programme on athletes in the 1980s and 1990s. the majority of revelations of chinese doping have focused on swimmers and track and field athletes, such as ma junren's ma family army (馬家軍). more recently, three chinese weightlifters were stripped of their gold olympic medals for doping at the 2008 summer olympics. in a july 2012 interview published by the sydney morning herald newspaper, chen zhangho, the lead doctor for the chinese olympic team at the los angeles, seoul and barcelona olympics told of how he had tested hormones, blood doping and steroids on about fifty elite athletes. chen also accused the united states, the soviet union and france of using performance-enhancing drugs at the same time as china. in 2012 and 2017 xue yinxian revealed systematic doping of chinese athletes in olympic games (and in other international sport events). he has claimed that more than 10,000 athletes in china were doped in the systematic chinese government doping program and that they received performance-enhancing drugs in the 1980s and 1990s. he stated that the entirety of international medals (both in the olympics and other international competitions) won by chinese athletes in the 1980s and 1990s must be taken back. this is contrary to previous statements by the chinese government, which had denied involvement in systematic doping, claiming that athletes doped individually. the international olympic committee and the world anti-doping agency have investigated these allegations. soviet union according to british journalist andrew jennings, a kgb colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the ioc to undermine doping tests and that soviet athletes were "rescued with tremendous efforts". on the topic of the 1980 summer olympics, a 1989 australian study said "there is hardly a medal winner at the moscow games, certainly not a gold medal winner, who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. the moscow games might as well have been called the chemists' games." a member of the ioc medical commission, manfred donike, privately ran additional tests with a new technique for identifying abnormal levels of testosterone by measuring its ratio to epitestosterone in urine. twenty percent of the specimens he tested, including those from sixteen gold medalists, would have resulted in disciplinary proceedings had the tests been official. the results of donike's unofficial tests later convinced the ioc to add his new technique to their testing protocols. the first documented case of "blood doping" occurred at the 1980 summer olympics as a runner was transfused with two pints of blood before winning medals in the 5000 m and 10,000 m. documents obtained in 2016 revealed the soviet union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 summer olympics in los angeles. dated prior to the country's decision to boycott the games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the program, along with suggestions for further enhancements. the communication, directed to the soviet union's head of track and field, was prepared by dr. sergey portugalov of the institute for physical culture. portugalov was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the russian doping program prior to the 2016 summer olympics. russia systematic doping in russian sports has resulted in 47 olympic and tens of world championships medals being stripped from russian competitors—the most of any country, more than four times the number of the runner-up, and more than 30% of the global total. russia also has the most competitors that have been caught doping at the olympic games, with more than 200. russian doping is distinct from doping in other countries because in russia the state supplied steroids and other drugs to sportspeople. due to widespread doping violations, including an attempt to sabotage ongoing investigations by the manipulation of computer data, on 9 december 2019 the world anti-doping agency (wada) banned russia from all international sport for four years. as at the 2018 winter olympics, wada will allow individual cleared russian athletes to compete neutrally under a title to be determined (which may not include the name "russia", unlike the use of "olympic athletes from russia" in 2018). russia later filed an appeal to the court of arbitration for sport (cas) against the wada decision. the court of arbitration for sport, on review of russia's appeal of its case from wada, ruled on 17 december 2020 to reduce the penalty that wada had imposed. instead of banning russia from sporting events, the ruling allowed russia to participate at the olympics and other international events, but for a period of two years the team cannot use the russian name, flag, or anthem and must present themselves as "neutral athlete" or "neutral team". the ruling does allow for team uniforms to display "russia" on the uniform as well as the use of the russian flag's colors within the