Amphetamines, steroids and men in boats

The battle for fairness in women’s rowing

Olympic rower, Lin Clark, and GB Rowing coach, Penny Chuter OBE, were at the height of their careers when the state-sponsored drugs cheats of the Soviet era won almost all the rowing medals available. I spoke to them about those dark days of Eastern Bloc domination of sport and the parallels with today’s fight for female-only categories.

Reading Sharron Davies’ book Unfair Play detailing the impact of state-sponsored doping on sport in the 70s and 80s I was struck by how little I knew of how this had affected my own sport of rowing. Back then, it was expected that the Eastern Bloc communist countries, such as the USSR, and German Democratic Republic, would win almost everything from swimming to rowing to weight lifting to athletics, in fact any sport you cared to name. The fall of the Berlin Wall revealed the full extent of the ‘win at all costs’ system, thanks to the extensive records kept by the East German authorities. All this is detailed in Sharron’s book (co-written with Craig Lord), and some of it makes for shocking reading. But what was it like for the female rowers and their coaches who competed at the Olympics during the height of the doping era?

Penny Chuter was the GB Rowing Women’s Coach at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, the first year that women were allowed to compete in rowing at the Games. ‘Of course, we all knew about the doping, we talked about it all the time,’ she says. ‘The athletes had more exposure to it, in the changing rooms, than I did as a coach but we all knew that cheating was going on.

Penny Chuter at the Commonwealth Games 1986.

‘As a coach, I filmed a lot of the crews training and racing, but also close-ups of the medal ceremonies, where it was more obvious that the Soviet Bloc female rowers had a different physique to the other women. They were very chunky around the waist and you could see in their eyes and faces that they were on drugs.’

Lin Clark rowed in the pair at Montreal with Beryl Mitchell. The other British women’s crew at Montreal was the coxed four. All the athletes knew that drug doping by the communist Eastern Bloc nations was rife, she says.

Beryl Mitchell (bow) and Lin Clark (stroke) Montreal Olympics 1976

Lin recalls seeing the East German women rowers for the first time in the athletes’ dining area at Montreal. ‘The East German women’s eight were chatting together and they had such deep voices. We all went and sat at a table nearby so that we could listen to them. We were horrified and fascinated in equal measure. It would have been futile to try and speak to them as we knew they were kept on a very tight rein and weren’t allowed to speak to anyone outside of their team.

‘Everybody knew that the athletes from the Eastern Bloc countries were on drugs. We’d raced against a Russian team earlier in the season. They’d raced on the Saturday and put in a phenomenal time yet they didn’t turn up for the final on the Sunday and the rumours were that they’d tested positive. That didn’t seem to matter as they were reinstated for the Olympics a few months later.’

That drugs were fuelling the success of the communist crews was obvious from the times recorded, says Lin. ‘There were East German women’s crews who were winning in record times that were almost comparable to the men.’ [See footnote.]

Amphetamines

In fact, drug cheats in women’s rowing were nothing new as Penny Chuter knew only too well from her own racing days. ‘In the 1960s it was amphetamines. They remove the pain barrier and allow you to row through it. The pain barrier is a safety net that would stop you exercising yourself to death and amphetamines reduce or remove its effect. They are very risky to take because you have to adjust the dose to each individual, and time the dose correctly.’

If you take the dose too early the effects wear off and if you take too much you risk going into cardiac arrest, explains Penny.

She tells the story of competing in the single sculls final at the 1961 European Championships on the River Vltava in Prague (in those days the highest level event open to women). ‘A fisherman had rowed his boat into the middle of the course – can you imagine that nowadays! The race was delayed for an hour while they moved him on. When we finished the race one of the women who’d won a medal collapsed and fell into the water and two safety boats came straight to her aid. Whilst it’s not unusual for rowers to collapse at the finish of a race, what was unusual was that two safety boats were standing by to rescue her. In those days safety boats were not the norm so to have two at the ready was extremely unusual, almost as if they were expecting something to happen… The sculler didn’t collect her medal that evening, although we did see her later in the season. I have always wondered if the delay in racing the final meant that she had been given a second dose of amphetamines and this had caused her to collapse.’

Penny Chuter in her Great Britain blazer in 1961 at the European Championships.

Penny Chuter at Grunnau Regatta 1962.

Steroids

In the 1970s and 80s anabolic steroids became the cheating nations’ drug of choice. ‘Anabolic steroids boosted strength and anaerobic capacity. They also allowed athletes to tolerate a higher training load and shorter recovery periods between training,’ says Penny. ‘Unlike the amphetamines which were used during competition, steroids could be used year-round during training and then be stopped to clear them from the body before competition, so that you were ‘clean’ for racing.’

The extra strength and anaerobic capacity provided by anabolic steroids was particularly advantageous in the shorter 1k race distance that was the women’s Olympic race distance at the time. Women were not deemed strong enough to race 2k so the race distance was set at 1k.

‘This was a double whammy for women,’ says Penny. ‘One kilometre is a more difficult distance to race as it is an extended sprint and the endurance energy systems don’t get a chance to fully kick in. It requires 3-4 minutes of performance which is physiologically very demanding. Ask any rower or athlete and they will tell you that a race of 3-4 minutes is the worst!’ says Penny.

‘In short the steroids affected female rowers more than male rowers, and the shorter racing distance for women also gave the steroid dopers a further benefit. This combination made the impact of drug cheating much more pronounced in women’s rowing.’

The Olympic women’s rowing results bear testament to the dominance of the Eastern Bloc. At Montreal there were six women’s rowing events. Of the 18 podium places available, communist countries won 15 of them. At Moscow in 1980, 100% of the women’s rowing medals went to communist countries (although the USA had boycotted these Games). In 1984 at Los Angeles the Soviets led a boycott of the Games. Romania one of the few communist countries to attend, won five gold and two silver medals.  

At the 1988 Seoul Olympics the Eastern bloc were back and won 14 of the 18 podium places. It wasn’t until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that the communist stranglehold on women’s rowing was loosened and at Barcelona in 1992 Canada and the newly-unified Germany dominated the Gold-medal positions.

Penny believes that the Eastern Bloc countries could possibly have been successful without the drugs, simply because of the resources that had been pumped into sport and especially the fact that these regimes had full-time rowers. ‘In 1976 the Amateur Rowing Association [now British Rowing] employed three full-time coaches, one each for the men, the women and the junior squads. The East Germans had 54 full-time professional coaches running their programme. Each rowing centre had a huge support staff of physiologists and all the other “ologists” including doping specialists. They had everything from a full-time boat designer to all the latest biomechanical analysis. We knew all this but had no funding for it. At Montreal, Bob Janousek and I were the only paid coaches on the rowing team. I coached both women’s crews. Every men’s crew had a coach, but apart from Bob, they were all volunteers, as were the team doctor and physio.’

On a two-week coaching exchange trip to Moscow in 1981 Penny experienced the Soviet rowing programme up close. ‘Recruitment started via special sports schools focusing on children from about 12-years old who showed the physique and physiology for sports requiring height and endurance. Later they progressed to specialised high-performance sports centres including centres for rowing. At these centres the rowers were supported and trained full-time. There were literally hundreds of rowers being coached and a further recruitment resource was their armed forces. It was exactly what we are doing now with the rowers based at Caversham, but without the communist doctrines, yet the Soviets were doing it long before us. The system was set up to win at all and I believe they probably could have won without the drugs.’’

Penny’s experiences of being cheated out of medals as an athlete and seeing the rowers she coached also cheated, drove her to push hard for clean sport, fairness and the 2k distance for women.

‘I made it my life’s work to move the women to 2k. It was ridiculous that women were thought incapable of racing the same distance as the men.’ Penny and the ARA lobbied FISA and finally in 1985, the year after the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, FISA extended the women’s racing distance to 2k, so that the first Olympic Games in which the women and men raced over the same distance was in Seoul in 1988.

Penny gave short shrift to drug cheats and this zero-tolerance approach led to rowing’s reputation in this country as a ‘clean’ sport. She was a supporter of out-of-competition testing which she believed would catch those athletes taking steroids. When out-of-competition testing was being mooted by the Sports Council in the 1980s Penny was then Men’s Chief Coach and pushed for rowing to be the first governing body in the UK to volunteer for its introduction.

As a coach in the ‘West’ you didn’t have, and indeed wouldn’t want, the same level of control over every aspect of your athletes’ lives as they had in the Soviet Bloc, says Penny. ‘What our rowers did in their spare time could not be controlled and it was down to them. Therefore, if a rower was caught doping it was much more difficult to identify if the coach was involved in the doping or not.’

Clean British coaches felt vulnerable to this possibility. ‘In the East everything that the athletes did, ate, injected, etc., was controlled by the coach and the system– it was state-sponsored doping sanctioned from on high. All my rowers knew that if they were caught doping, they’d be exposed as cheats and made an example of,’ says Penny.

The experience of competing against drugs cheats has left its mark on both Penny and Lin. For Lin, the impact on her husband Jim was painful to see (for let’s not forget that men were also racing drug cheats). Jim Clark, was in the GB Squad from 1970 to 1982. At Montreal in 1976, he was in the GB eight which won Silver behind the GDR, and was 4^th in the double at Moscow in 1980, behind three Eastern Bloc crews.

‘I was upset by their Silver at Montreal,’ says Lin. ‘The GB crew was beaten by drugs. He’d never come less than fourth in any international event. If it hadn’t been for drug cheats, Jim’s medal tally would have been phenomenal.’

In an era where female rowers had had to fight even to get into the sport it was hard to speak up, says Lin. ‘It was my first selection for the Olympics. With hindsight, I can’t understand how I accepted it but you have to remember that we were the underdogs. It had taken 76 years to get women to row at an Olympics and even then we weren’t allowed to race the full distance as they considered us too weak. There was antagonism from some of the men in rowing – they didn’t want us there. We were just about tolerated, let alone listened to. In 1976, we weren’t going to get near the medal table and I didn’t feel I could speak up. I developed a coping strategy which was to work as hard as I could and I developed this attitude that I wasn’t going to let the system beat me. It wasn’t necessarily a very healthy attitude but it was the way I coped at the time. I knew we needed to win if we wanted to be listened to.’

And win she did. In 1985 Lin’s rowing career had taken off with a win in the lightweight double with Beryl Mitchell at World Championships – the first British women’s crew to win at international level. This was followed by Gold in the Lightweight Four at the Commonwealth Games in 1986. At the 1980 Moscow Olympics Lin rowed in the eight that came fifth behind four Eastern Bloc crews.

Lightweight double gold medallists World Championships 1985.

Men in Boats

Having seen at firsthand the worst of state-sponsored drug cheating during their rowing careers both Lin and Penny have been dismayed to witness the assault on women’s rowing by the inclusion of males in the female categories.

‘Women are women, and that’s it,’ says Penny. ‘If a man wants to change his sex that’s a personal decision for him but to then be allowed to participate in competitions for females is simply unfair to those born female. It’s not right. There has been great deal of pontificating and procrastination by the IOC, World Rowing and British Rowing when the issue is actually very straightforward. I’ve expressed my views in the British Rowing questionnaire that came out in May [2023]. The transgender issue, in simplicity, is the same argument as the anabolic steroids doping which we faced in the 70s and 80s. If you’re male you’ve got more testosterone than females and you’re using testosterone to gain advantage in the female events.’

Lin agrees: ‘After all we’d been through to get women’s rowing accepted and where it is today it just felt like we’d taken a backwards step.’ Lin has actively campaigned to get the rules changed and says she was delighted when British Rowing recently changed its competition rules to restrict the female category to those ‘born female’. ‘We got there in the end with British Rowing,’ says Lin. ‘To me the IOC should have taken a stand right from the very beginning.’ Lin, and a number of other women rowers I have spoken to, was disappointed that a former rower and medical director of the IOC, Dr Richard Budgett, is on record as stating ‘everyone agrees that trans women are women’, which appears to support the inclusion of males into the female category.

‘This was so disappointing coming from an Olympic team mate’, says Lin.  

It has been a very sorry chapter in British women’s rowing, and it’s not over yet. World Rowing still allows males to compete in the women’s category so while British women are protected from unfairness there is still a possibility that they could encounter males in their events at international level (and that has been the case in indoor rowing for many years)

Since the mid-2000s males have been competing and winning in women’s indoor rowing events (at least 10 British and three World Indoor Rowing records are currently held by males). In 2015, British Rowing introduced its first Transgender Policy which formalised the inclusion of males into female categories. In the same year, the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race saw the selection of a male into the Blondie crew.

The new rules to protect the women’s category came into effect on 11^th September 2023 in time for the start of the new season. How the rules will be enforced is a little vague and many women, such as Sharron Davies, are calling for sex-testing to be reinstated. In the 1970s and 80s all competitors in the female category underwent sex testing – usually a simple swab of the cheek to ensure the presence of XX chromosomes. ‘It was a quick, easy, test,’ says Lin. ‘I think it should be brought back.’

Women’s rowing has been the story of setbacks, triumphs and further steps backwards. But for Lin the presence of drug cheats at the Olympics in 1976 did not sour her experience. 

‘We were so excited to be at the first Olympic Games that allowed women to row,’ says Lin. ‘We debated going to the opening ceremony because we were racing the next day. But we went and I’m glad because it was the most wonderful experience to be walking out into the stadium behind the British flag.’

With Paris 2024 just around the corner it is some comfort to know that the women on the British team will have been selected in an ethos of fair play. Now World Rowing needs to change its rules so that future generations can walk behind their flag knowing that their sport is fair at all levels.

Footnote: Times from the rowing A Finals of the Olympic Games of the 70s and 80s are nowhere to be found on the Olympic Games official website, only the lesser final times are recorded. There are, however, full race listings from Olympics held in the post-Soviet era, London 2012 for example gives the full results for all the finals. Has the IOC deleted the A-Final results from the 70s and 80s because they lay bare the huge disparity in the times of the Eastern Bloc nations? Olympic race times were recorded in the British Rowing almanacks so those who have kept their pre-1989 copies could check the race results. Let me know if you find them!