Athletics: The spy who jumped in from the cold

During the early part of her track and field career, when she was the trail-blazing star of the all-conquering, turbo-charged East German (DDR) women's team, Heike Drechsler apparently led a double life. It was suggested in documents uncovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the young lady who struck long jump gold as an 18-year-old at the World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 had worked as an informer for the Staatssicherheitsdienst, the ruthless East German secret police force more popularly known as the Stasi, reporting on the behaviour of her team-mates. Her code name – according to Stasi files discovered by Professor Werner Franke and his wife, Brigitte Berendonk – was "Springen: Jump".

Yesterday, at the Council Meeting of the International Association of Athletics Federation two days ahead of the World Championships here in Japan's third city, the alleged spy came in from the cold. For Drechsler, now 42 and two years into her retirement from competitive athletics, election on to the IAAF's women's committee represented a jump from the margins of the sporting world in the west to a seat of officially endorsed authority. It was also a riposte to those who continue to portray her as a symbol of the steroid-driven East German track and field machine.

The claims of Drechsler's past as a secret agent were made in a book published in 1992 by Professor Franke, a prominent biochemist, and his wife, who competed as a pentathlete for East Germany before fleeing to the West and competing as a discus thrower for West Germany in the Olympic Games of 1968 and 1972. The couple were among those given the task of sifting through 50 miles of Stasi files. They unearthed evidence of systematic doping and disclosed all of the details in the pages of Doping-Dokumente.

Paperwork showed that, at centres in Jena, Leipzig and Berlin, East German sportsmen and women were on medically supervised steroid regimes. The files charted the progress of the athletes and the dosages given to them. The names were in code but, in comparing known performances in competitions to athletes and dates in the file, it was possible to identify the individuals. They included Drechsler, twice a world champion and twice an Olympic gold medal winner in the long jump, and Marita Koch, the woman whose 400m world record of 47.60 seconds has been untouchable since 1985.

The drugs administered included the anabolic steroid oral turinabol and the hormone testosterone. The book reported that Drechsler had been given drugs between 1982 and 1984 and when she described the claim as "a lie" she was sued by the authors and ordered to pay £7,500 costs and to issue a formal apology.

When Drechsler was nominated for a seat on the IAAF's women's committee by the German athletics federation, the Deutscher Leichtathletik-Verband, Professor Franke complained: "What kind of message does this send out? It would be better not to nominate anyone at all rather than Drechsler."

His has not been the only critical voice. Speaking at the German Championships in Erfurt, Eike Emrich, the vice-president of the DLV, made his opposition public.

Still, when it came to the vote in the Osaka Grand Cube convention centre yesterday, Drechsler was the German nominee on the ballot sheet. With 22 nominees and eight seats to be filled, she polled the joint fourth-highest total, 103 votes.

If eyebrows were raised, they did not belong to her. Pointing to her role as an IAAF ambassador for the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, and to her official involvement with the German Olympic Sport Federation, she told the German newspaper Die Welt: "I did not understand why my nomination was criticised. It was absolutely incomprehensible to me. My standing with the IAAF shows up also in the fact that I may even carry the IAAF flag into the stadium in Osaka. But my character has again and again been questioned, because I came from the DDR.

"I can clearly state that I condemn the doping practices of the DDR," she added. "I never knowingly or willingly took any drugs. I can only say that physicians made different recordings and that is not what really happened."

Asked if she had been doped unwittingly, Drechsler replied: "The documents exist. I cannot exclude anything. But I furnished my achievements after unification under more 'controlled' conditions – and may I add with numerous doping tests. I was talented. I had an ideal physical condition. I put in much hard work."

Those later achievements included winning two Olympic golds in the long jump in the colours of the unified Germany – at the Barcelona Games in 1992 and Sydney in 2000 – and also winning the long jump at the World Championships in Stuttgart in 1993.

Asked whether she feared her reputation might have been destroyed by the allegations, Drechsler added: "The feeling was less that but more that I was 'abused'. I fear that I became a victim. The DDR system manipulated and monitored. It had contempt for human beings.

"For me, at the time, it was a sound world. You did not analyse and you were taught not to analyse. I was lucky and did not feel political at the time. I was a 'blind runner', like many others. After unification everything hit us like bricks.

"I must come out of this period of history clear in my head. For me, it is important that I learnt from it. I speak in schools against doping. It is important that young people know what happened in the DDR. We must talk about it. Children need to be made conscious of it, how humans were manipulated back then, but also that today many athletes from all over the world try to get an advantage from doping."

From her vantage point, working as a co-commentator for Swiss television in the Nagai Stadium, the alleged spy turned committee woman may well see athletes trying to gain a tainted advantage over the nine days of this year's World Championships, which open here on Saturday morning – at 11pm Friday, British time.

The IAAF intends to conduct a record number of drug tests – 1,000 of them, 115 more than at the last World Championships in Helsinki two years ago. "The IAAF is determined to ensure that these championships highlight our ongoing and aggressive commitment to the war on doping," proclaimed Lamine Diack, president of the IAAF.

It could be argued that appointing a victim of that war – an innocent victim Drechsler and her supporters would maintain – might help in the fight. Professor Franke and his wife would disagree. Heidi Krieger would probably do so, too.

She was fed such massive doses of hormones under the East German doping programme that she underwent a sex-change operation and is now living as a man, Herr Andreas Krieger.

The winner of the women's shot put at the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart, where Drechsler struck gold in both the 200m and the long jump, the she-turned-he is one of 160 former East German athletes who have been seeking compensation against Jenapharm, the firm which manufactured the pharmaceutical weaponry with which the DDR took on the sporting world and won – at a cost that is still being counted.

* Lord Coe has been elected a vice-president of the IAAF.

Medals of honour? Drechsler's glittering career

Olympic Games

Gold: 1992 Barcelona Long jump

Gold: 2000 Sydney Long jump

Silver: 1988 Seoul Long jump

Bronze: 1988 Seoul 100m

Bronze: 1988 Seoul 200m

World Championships

Gold: 1983 Helsinki Long jump

Gold: 1993 Stuttgart Long jump

Silver: 1987 Rome 100m

Silver: 1991 Tokyo Long jump

Bronze: 1987 Rome Long jump

Bronze: 1991 Tokyo 4x100m relay

European Championships

Gold: 1986 Stuttgart 200m

Gold: 1986 Stuttgart Long jump

Gold: 1990 Split Long jump

Gold: 1994 Helsinki Long jump

Gold: 1998 Budapest Long jump

Total: 9 gold, 3 silver, 4 bronze