Not many people will have heard of Ute Krause. She used to be a swimmer. She was doped up to the eyeballs in East Germany and then pushed out to win medals - which she did. Testifying this week in Berlin in the trial of former East German sports officials Manfred Ewald and Manfred Hoeppner, she told the horror story of how her body was chemically changed.
"My body went through explosive changes," she said. "I felt like a stranger in my own body."
Ewald and Hoeppner allegedly gave the athletes steroids which effectively turned them into men.
Rica Reinisch won three Olympic medals for East Germany. She said she was no longer able to train in 1982 because of gynaecological and heart problems. She said she was given the pills from the time she was 12, has suffered from an inflamed heart muscle problem on three occasions and said she has had two miscarriages.
Both Hoeppner and Ewald are accused of contributing to bodily harming a total 142 of sportswomen, most of them swimmers and athletes, by ordering them to take steroids.
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