Sport's Greatest Cover Up.

"To achieve this success, the East German state ensured that it had the best of everything - facilities and equipment, coaching and medical back-up, psychological testing and dietary supplements. However, it was the scale of state sponsored doping - State Plan 14.25 - that set East Germany apart from any other sporting nation.

Over a twenty year period in the 1970s and 1980s, up to 10,000 athletes were chemically doped. Each year hundreds of thousands of steroid pills were administered. And the programme worked. East Germany became synonymous with gold medals and world records.

At its height, the programme employed up to 1,500 scientists and doctors. This was all backed up with the utmost secrecy - brutally enforced by the secret police, the Stazi."

On the eve of the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, BBC Science reporter Matt McGrath investigates the legacy of East Germany's sporting system in part one of a two part Discovery special - Sport's Greatest Cover Up."

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