1960s–1980sPeer-reviewedWell documented
Doping and the Fight for Fair Play
On the timeline · around 1960s–1980s · The Global Games
What happened
As the Cold War turned the Games into a contest of national prestige, cheating with performance-enhancing drugs spread. From 1965 the state of East Germany ran a systematic, secret doping program, giving anabolic steroids to thousands of athletes — often without their knowledge — to win Olympic medals, especially in women's events, with lasting damage to their health. The IOC banned such drugs in 1974 and began testing.
Why it matters
Doping became the great shadow over modern sport. The East German program and later scandals drove the creation of drug-testing regimes and, eventually, the World Anti-Doping Agency — an endless race between cheats and testers.