Jennifer Beth Thompson is an American former competition swimmer and anesthesiologist.
Marion Lois Jones, also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is an American former world champion track-and-field athlete and former professional basketball player. She won three gold medals and two bronze medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but was later stripped of her medals after admitting to lying to federal investigators about her knowledge of performance enhancing drugs.
Janet Beth Evans is an American former competition swimmer who specialized in distance freestyle events. Evans was a world champion and world record-holder, and won a total of four gold medals at the 1988 and the 1992 Olympics.
Kristin Otto is a former German swimmer, becoming Olympic, World and European champion, multiple times. She is most famous for being the first woman to win six gold medals at a single Olympic Games, doing so at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. In long course, she held the world records in the 100 meter and 200 meter freestyle events. Otto was also the first woman to swim the short course 100 meter backstroke in under a minute, doing so at an international short course meet at Indiana University in 1983.
In competitive sports, doping is the use of banned athletic performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) by athletes, as a way of cheating. As stated in the World Anti-Doping Code by WADA, doping is defined as the occurrence of one or more of the anti-doping rule violations outlined in Article 2.1 through Article 2.11 of the Code. The term doping is widely used by organizations that regulate sporting competitions. The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical and is prohibited by most international sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee. Furthermore, athletes taking explicit measures to evade detection exacerbate the ethical violation with overt deception and cheating.
Claudia María Poll Ahrens is a Costa Rican-Nicaraguan former swimmer who competed in the 200 m to 800 m freestyle events. She is Costa Rica's only Olympic gold-medalist, having won the country's first Olympic gold medals at the 1996 Olympics in the 200 meter freestyle. Claudia also competed at the 2000 Olympics, where she won two bronze medals. She is a multiple national record holder in the freestyle events.
The United States of America has sent athletes to every celebration of the modern Olympic Games with the exception of the 1980 Summer Olympics, during which it led a boycott in protest of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) is the National Olympic Committee for the United States.
Shirley Frances Babashoff is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in multiple events. Babashoff set six world records and earned a total of nine Olympic medals in her career. She won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay in both the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, and she won the 1975 world championship in both the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle. During her career, she set 37 national records and for some time held all national freestyle records from the 100-meter to 800-meter event.
Competitors at the Olympic Games have used banned athletic performance-enhancing drugs.
Petra Schneider is a German retired medley and freestyle swimmer. She actively competed in the 1970s and 1980s.
Wendy Boglioli, formerly Wendy Lansbach, is an American former swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder. After retiring from competitive swimming, she became a coach, and later, a motivational speaker.
Roland Matthes was a German swimmer and the most successful backstroke swimmer of all time. Between April 1967 and August 1974 he won all backstroke competitions he entered. He won four European championships and three world championships in a row, and swam 19 world and 28 European records in various backstroke, butterfly and medley events. He was trained by Marlies Grohe.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), often called East Germany, founded a separate National Olympic Committee for socialist East Germany on 22 April 1951 in the Rotes Rathaus of East Berlin. This was the last of three German Olympic committees of the time. It was not recognized by the IOC for over a decade.
Rica Reinisch is a retired swimmer from East Germany. She was a specialist in backstroke, setting four world records in the Moscow Games, at the age of fifteen. She won gold medals in the 100 m and 200 m backstroke and as a member of the 4 x 100 medley relay team.
Barbara Krause is a former freestyle swimmer from East Germany. She was a three-time Olympic gold medalist and eight-time world record holder. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Krause won gold medals in the 100 m and 200 m freestyle and in the 4×100 m freestyle relay.
Steffen Grummt is an East German decathlete who competed from the late 1970s to 1983. He later competed in bobsleigh in the mid-1980s.
The government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) conducted a decades-long program of coercive administration and distribution of performance-enhancing drugs, initially testosterone, later mainly anabolic drugs, to its elite athletes. The aim of the program, which began in the 1960s, was to bolster East Germany's state image and prestige by winning medals in international competition such as the Olympic Games. The system was extremely formalised and heavily based on secrecy. Scholars and athletes have noted the pervasiveness of operations, the secrecy surrounding them, and the extent of abuse that athletes suffered because of them. While doping brought East Germany impressive results in sporting events, it was often devastating to the health of the athletes involved.
China was alleged to have conducted a state-sanctioned doping operation in the 1980s and 1990s by former General Administration of Sport physician Xue Yinxian. The World Anti-Doping Agency investigated these allegations and found no evidence to corroborate them. Other allegations of doping have focused on swimmers and track and field athletes, such as those taught by Ma Junren. In the Olympics, China has been stripped of a total of three gold medals for doping; all were weightlifters competing in the 2008 Summer Olympics. Eleven Chinese athletes were stripped of medals for doping at the 1994 Asian Games. China's doping has been attributed to a number of factors, such as the exchange of culture and technology with foreign countries. Some scholars believe that the country has become the focus of Western anti-doping condemnation in place of East Germany and other former Eastern Bloc countries.
Karen König is a retired German freestyle swimmer who won two gold medals at the 1985 European Aquatics Championships as part of the East Germany relay teams. She missed the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles that were boycotted by East Germany, and instead competed at the Friendship Games, where she won a gold medal in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, setting a new world record. She was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold in East Germany.
The Last Gold is a 2016 film about American swimmers Shirley Babashoff, Kim Peyton, Jill Sterkel, and Wendy Boglioli and winning the American women's only gold medal in the 4 x 100 meter relay at the 1976 Olympic Games, defeating the East Germans.
