East German Steroids' Toll: 'They Killed Heidi'
By JERE LONGMAN

Published: January 26, 200
MAGDEBURG, Germany, Jan. 20 — Andreas Krieger opened a shopping bag in his living room and spilled out his past: track and field uniforms, a scrapbook and athlete credentials from the former East Germany.

The photos on the credentials looked familiar, but the face was fuller and softer, the hair covering the ears and draping down the neck. This was Heidi Krieger, the 1986 European women's shot-put champion, perhaps the most extreme example of the effects of an insidious, state-sponsored system of doping in East Germany.


The taking of pills and injections of anabolic steroids created virile features and heightened confusion about an already uncertain sexual identity, Krieger said, influencing a decision to have a sex-change operation in 1997 and to become known legally as Andreas.....(click for rest of article)