Marita Koch

The 400 m world record run

On 6 October 1985 at the year's World Cup meet, Koch set the current 400 m world record of 47.60 seconds. The world record 400 m run had been well planned, and her basic speed and speed endurance proven in several training runs in the weeks prior. One week prior to her 400 m world record run, anecdotal reports suggest that Koch had run the 200 m in 21.56 seconds (fully automatic time). This 200 m performance was never verified by the IAAF and remains unofficial.

In her world record run, Koch, running in lane 2, came out of the blocks at a scorching pace and eliminated the stagger on most of her competitors by the end of the first bend. Her 100 m split time was reported to be 11.3 seconds, while her 200 m split time was reported to be 22.4 seconds. At the halfway point in the race, she had completely destroyed most of a world class field. Her 300 m split was reported to be 34.1 seconds (hand timed), the all-time best performance for this distance. During the final stages of the race, the original video footage only captured Koch and Olga Bryzhina (née Vladykina) of the former USSR, who was trailing behind, but closing the gap. The rest of the field had been left so far behind that they were not captured by the camera as Koch and Vladykina crossed the finishing line. Third place was Lillie Leatherwood, more than two seconds behind Vladykina. Koch had gained too much of an advantage in the early stages of the race, and Vladykina was unable to pull in Koch before the finish line. Vladykina also ran her all-time best performance (48.27 seconds) in that race.

In a 400 m race, the only women to have broken the 48-second barrier are Koch, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (47.78 seconds, Tokyo, 2025), Marileidy Paulino (47.98 seconds, Tokyo, 2025), and Jarmila Kratochvílová (47.99 seconds, Helsinki, 1983). Kratochvílová was Koch's main rival over the distance and also a 400 m world record holder in the early 1980s.

Drug use controversy

Koch's achievements, along with the performances of other East German female athletes, have long been under suspicion that they were achieved with the aid of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. These drugs were not detectable at the time. In 1991, German anti-drug activists Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke were able to save several doctoral theses and other documents written by scientists working for the East German drug research programme.

The documents list the dosage and timetables for the administration of anabolic steroids to many athletes of the former DDR, with one of them being Marita Koch. According to the sources, Koch did use the anabolic steroid Oral-Turinabol (4-Chlorodehydromethyltestosterone) from 1981 to 1984 with dosages ranging from 530 to 1460 mg/year.

Berendonk and Franke also discovered a letter allegedly written by Koch, complaining that her rival, Bärbel Wöckel, was receiving higher doses of steroids than her because Wöckel's uncle was president of the pharmaceutical company Jenapharm.