Ed Harry BBC World Marita Koch 30th Anniversary 400m WR Investigation

hi there wherever you are around the world welcome to sport today one of the oldest world records in track and field is 30 years old this thursday this tuesday should i say on october the 6th 1985 east german athlete marita koch ran the 400 meters in 47.6 seconds that's more than one and a half seconds quicker than alison felix clocked to take gold at this year's world championships our athletics commentator ed harry joins me now ed cox world record has been the subject of much debate over the years centering on whether we can believe it was set by a clean athlete that's even though she never actually failed a drug chest and it's because nick marita competed in an era when we know east germany was systematically doping its athlete this athletes now this was state sponsored doping from 1974 through to the mid to late 1980s the question asked of marita is if so many were part of this program and we're talking about up to 2 000 athletes a year being recruited if so many were why should we believe that she is clean now doesn't give many interviews but at the end of 2014 she was inducted into her sports hall of fame it was at that i iwaf gala in monaco that she told me she did nothing wrong and she deserves this 400 meter world record i don't have to prove anything to myself i have a clear conscience i can only repeat myself i never tested positive i never did anything which i shouldn't have done at the time i would have also liked to have proved this in 1992 or 1993 and i believe i would have still won the period following the fall of the berlin wall and reunification came a little bit too late for me i didn't have the luck which heike draxler did to compete for another three or four years that annoyed me quite a bit i know what i trained for those 12 to 15 years and it was a long journey i didn't achieve the world record out of nowhere i'd previously improved my time on five occasions in slow steps around the 48 second mark and at some point it became a world record all world records are certainly in some way an exception so now the next person has to come who is ready to break the record someone who can also train so much so intensely towards that and who is a talent at some point that time will come well ed merida call couldn't be clearer there what do her critics actually say they urge us to read the evidence the state-sponsored systematic doping of east german athletes was administered by the state's secret police the stasi now on german reunification 25 years ago this week the stasis records which dealt with who was receiving banned substances and in what quantities all of that was handed over to a member of the german science council professor werner franca now he brought it all into the public domain and in 1992 collaborated on a book with his wife brigitte birendong which published doping data we're talking about dosages amounts of ministers year on year for a number of leading east german athletes including marita now i've been to see professor franca in heidelberg germany their book came out 23 years ago so i asked has there ever been any legal action brought by or on behalf of marisa cox there was just you know newspaper where she announced she would go against [Music] my wife brigitte berendong on the book and we said oh please do that would be the best for getting chord proof specific uh truth yeah we still would be happy if you would go against us still because that would give us the chance to bring all the materials or the three volumes of the reports of our doctor you know to court as court documents all right ed marita cox always maintain she was clean mature and a responsible athlete what did the sports governing body say about this well first a bit more on that paperwork those reports that professor franca mentions that data detailing these dosages for these athletes has been used on numerous occasions in the german courts over the last 25 years to seek compensation and get compensation for german athletes east german is now suffering from a range of health problems as a result of being given these banned substances and it is very much a working legal document in that respect the sports world governing body though the iwaf has never used these figures to launch its own investigation i've asked them in the last week or so researching this story why that is and they told me the following there's a 10-year statute of limitations they say in the wader code to which the iwaf is in full compliance however they continue should an athlete subsequently admit to having used or taken advantage of substances or techniques prohibited at the time the iwf can remove an athlete's performance from the record books some of marita cox's teammates have asked for their performances to be removed from the record books as for herself she told me she doesn't feel the need to continually defend her reputation well everyone who knows me knows that i don't seek the publicity if i'm asked then i answer aside from that i just have to live with it everyone can form an opinion about everyone else and well i can only call it how i see it all right ed harry thanks very much for the latest there on the radical

Channel: Ed Harry

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Length: 5min 44sec (344 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020