In November 1978, Western gymnastics officials charged that Eastern Bloc programs were using drugs to delay puberty in young female gymnasts, deliberately keeping athletes small to secure a competitive advantage.
The accusations emerged during the World Championships in Strasbourg, France, where officials remarked on the striking physical disparities between Eastern and Western competitors. Dr. Robert Klein, the meet’s chief medical examiner, reported having seen photographs of a Soviet gymnast showing what he described as a “steady regression of breast development” over a four-year period. Danish federation president Niels Peter Nielsen voiced broader suspicions, warning, “We see small girls, who I suspect are being controlled by drugs… they are being stopped from becoming women.” Even Nadia Comăneci, the sport’s reigning star, expressed astonishment at the child-like proportions of some competitors, remarking that she could not believe the 17-year-old Maria Filatova was actually older than herself.
There were many explanations for what Westerners were seeing. The onset of puberty varies from individual to individual. The sport itself favored smaller bodies, particularly in an era when the uneven bars were set closer together. Chronic overtraining and disordered eating almost certainly affected physical maturation, as well. More consequentially, age falsification distorted Western observers’ assumptions about normal pubertal timelines: gymnasts listed as fourteen or fifteen were sometimes several years younger in reality, and their bodies appeared pre-pubescent because they were, in fact, still pre-pubescent.
The historical irony of this moment is especially sharp. We now know that East Germany did, in fact, operate a systematic doping program for young athletes, and that one explicit aim of that program was premature growth-plate fusion—precisely the outcome Western officials feared in 1978, though they lacked proof at the time. The accusations were therefore simultaneously unsubstantiated, given the evidence available to the accusers, and eerily prescient, given what was occurring behind closed doors in at least one Eastern Bloc sports system.
The two articles that follow capture this moment of accusation and denial. The first, an Associated Press report, presents the Western claims with striking specificity, detailing suspected mechanisms and targets. The second, drawn from the FIG’s official bulletin, is a categorical rejection that combines legitimate scientific argumentation with institutional defensiveness and, in hindsight, a troubling underestimation of what state-run sports programs were capable of concealing.
1978: The Allegations
‘Brake’ drug use hinted
By JOHN M. FLORESCU
Associated Press WriterPARIS — Western officials say women gymnasts from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe may be using a new “brake” drug to keep them in top form by delaying puberty.
Dr. Robert Klein of France, chief medical examiner at the recent World Gymnastics Championships, says he suspects that some Communist-bloc trainers have used a drug he could not identify that apparently acts on the pituitary gland, slowing development. Smaller, lighter female gymnasts outperform their seniors of equal ability because of the high strength-to-weight ratio needed in the sport, doctors say.
THE DIFFERENCE was clear at the Strasbourg, France, world championships when Romanian star Nadia Comaneci, who swept the Montreal Olympics two years ago as an elfin 14-year-old, was consistently outclassed. At 16, she has a woman’s figure and carries 20 extra pounds.
Klein said he had seen photos of a leading Soviet gymnast showing a steady regression of breast development over a four-year period.
The president of the Danish Gymnastics Federation Neils Peter Nielson, said, “I do not like the way we are going. We see small girls who I suspect are being controlled by drugs… they are being stopped from becoming women.”
A BRITISH expert who asked not to be named said the available physical evidence suggests the use of such a drug “is entirely possible.” But, he added, it could hardly be proved without sophisticated drug tests and the willing cooperation of the athletes concerned.
Prior to the Strasbourg meet, Klein said, officials from an unnamed Communist country sought assurances that there would be no doping tests before signing in their team members. There were no tests.
“I am afraid this throws wide open the door of doubt,” said Klein. “Those who have nothing to hide would be willing to submit to antidoping tests,” he said.
HE SAID full dope test facilities were available in Strasbourg, but International Gymnastics Federation President Yuri Titov, a former Soviet gymnast, did not request them.
Klein quoted Titov as saying: “Gymnasts don’t use drugs.”
Even Comaneci expressed bewilderment at the child-like proportions of 17-year-old star Maria Filatova of the Soviet Union, saying: “I can’t believe that Filatova is a year older than I am.”
THE COMMUNIST bloc won 30 of the 43 medals awarded at the Strasbourg championships.
Two of the world’s top three female gymnasts, both Soviet, weigh 79 and 92 pounds, and are aged 17 and 18 years, respectively — though they appear years younger.
While Klein does not reject genetic selection based on “small types” or even deliberate falsification of ages, he repeatedly stressed the possible use of “brake drugs which act on the pituitary glands.”
TO HIS knowledge, he said, such drugs — which are assumed to slow or even reverse sexual and physical growth — have never been used on athletes in the West.
Nielsen, suggesting another possibility, said he was told by a Czech trainer at the 1977 European Gymnastics Championships in Prague that “Czech trainers were using male hormones on girls to keep them at a low level of development.”
Max Bangerter of Switzerland, secretary-general of the IGF, said he did not believe the Communist bloc’s women gymnasts were systematically using drugs. “Doping is counter-productive in gymnastics because it impedes the physical movements required in competition,” he said in a telephone interview. “I have never heard of a doping case.”
COMMENTING ON the near-complete absence of physical maturity among women gymnasts in their late teens, Bangerter said high-level gymnastic training can retard breast growth.
Dope tests have never been applied in world championship competition and only once in the Olympics, at Mexico, Bangerter said.
Under existing regulations, only the IGF can initiate the tests that in the past have been left to national federations.
Lansing State Journal, November 8, 1978
Note: 1978 had some young teams. According to Otechestven Front, the average age of the Bulgarian team was 14.
1979: The Response in the FIG Bulletin
Unfounded Allegations
It was with some hesitation that I wrote these lines for the Dutch gymnastics revue after having been asked to do so by its editor. He wanted me to deal with a subject that had proved a ticklish one at the last World Championships of Gymnastics in Strasbourg — the allegation that certain gymnasts might be using artificial techniques with a view to restricting their growth. I do not enjoy rehashing past polemics, and I thought I had made my point quite clearly enough in the presence of the journalists and the coaches at Strasbourg. However, it has quite recently been brought to my notice that fresh and equally tactless allegations have been made. My intention here, therefore, is to make a fresh assessment of the situation from a purely personal standpoint in order to answer all such ill-intentioned allegations aimed for the most part, it would appear, at bringing gymnastics and gymnasts into disrepute — or at least in the case of certain countries.
Although the problem we are concerned with here has some aspects in common with classical doping — it is, in fact, all too readily suggested that some gymnasts among those better placed are, perhaps, “well doped”, and this is often entirely without any foundation and lacks the least substantiation. The remark is an all-too-easy means of explaining away outstanding performances. It is very frequently forgotten that, if these gymnasts are classified as the best it is perhaps because they are the best — because they have worked hard and long and quite simply merit their classification! It is easy to forget the hard work that lies behind every gymnastic performance.
It goes without saying that every association has its cheaters — this is one of the less savoury facts of life. Nevertheless, this must first be proved before accusations are levelled and I should like to say here and now that, as far as gymnastics are concerned, cheating is no easy matter. Try doping yourself (no, do not try — that is merely a figure of speech) and then swing around a horizontal bar or between the uneven bars and then make a landing… I believe that, after an experience of this kind, you would not be in a hurry to try it again unless you wanted to land in hospital. It would be naive to believe that no gymnasts in the world ever had recourse to doping substances but there can be no doubt that such practices are extremely rare in gymnastics.
But let us return to the more precise confines of the subject with which we are concerned here. Certain countries, we are told, and among them the best in the domain of women’s gymnastics, undertake measures with the assistance of their medical services to prevent the growth of their young girls.
It is understandable that young girls of slight stature and with short limbs are greatly sought after in view of the development of the techniques and the acrobatic performances in the floor exercises and, more particularly, on the uneven bars, but is it really necessary to go to the lengths of preventing or delaying their growth?
Before putting forward arguments that will show that this practice would be entirely illogical, stupid and dangerous, let us bear in mind a notion whose importance has considerable bearing on the problem we are discussing. Certain myths entirely without scientific foundation still exist which tend to make people believe that the practice of gymnastics in itself tends to slow down physical growth. I must most vehemently refute any such theory; the practice of artistic gymnastics — even at the highest level — does not merely not restrict growth, it positively favours an entirely harmonious somatic development.
The allegations of which I have been speaking shocked me most profoundly. Nevertheless, I should like to raise a few serious points that will show that the practices aimed at artificially and chemically affecting the development of the human skeleton cannot and must in no case be used on athletes in general and gymnasts in particular.
1. The technique of administration of any of the substances suggested has not yet been perfected and our knowledge of the secondary medical manifestations these could provoke is still limited. These manifestations can occur notably at the level of the hormonal chemistry of the body and sometimes accompanied by adverse effects on certain organs which can even lead to an inaptitude in a gymnast for any athletic effort of a high standard.
These substances can, therefore, involve certain dangers for the human organism in general, and are for use only in very specific cases for treating patients evincing very specific symptoms.2. These substances can cause imbalance in the development of the human skeleton involving a disproportion between the length of the upper and lower limbs and in the development of the cranium. These anomalies can become clearly visible and locatable in any gymnast so treated.
3. From the point of view of athletic and professional ethics, it is difficult to imagine that anyone would countenance practices such as these.
4. There is one argument that strikes me as capital. Instead of using artificial measures that involve serious risks and are tantamount to a total negation of any moral sense, it is perfectly simple to achieve the same ends naturally, simply by effecting a basic selection through the use of various permissible methods: it is possible to forecast with a narrow margin of error at the age of between 6 and 8 years what the stature of the individual will be when he or she becomes adult. This is very frequently done when selecting basketball players. It is a simple procedure, although the theory must be applied conversely in the case of gymnasts. I can say quite definitely that this method is used with excellent results in numerous countries, some of which play a leading role in competitive gymnastics.
In conclusion, I should like to point out that the search for little gymnasts should not be allowed to become an obsession, as certain young ladies of more Junoesque stature have shown — for example, at Strasbourg in 1978 and at Copenhagen in 1979 — that they are quite capable of holding their own with the brighter stars.
In all seriousness, however, we should not ever level accusations without proof but should do better to assess the facts at their face value and without immediately imagining the use of torturous, irrational and unhealthy practices, as this serves merely to bring our sport and all our gymnasts into disrepute.
Doctor Michel Léglise
FIG Bulletin, December 1979
Doctor-in-charge of the Olympic Preparatory Center
Medical Advisor to the French Gymnastics Federation
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