Track’s most resilient, and most suspect, world record in danger
IN 1983, at the age of 32, when most track athletes are beyond their fastest times, Jarmila Kratochvilova ran 800 metres in 1 minute, 53.28 seconds. The result was so blistering and unprecedented that it has become track and field’s longest-standing outdoor world record. And perhaps its most suspect.
Kratochvilova is 66 now, a pensioner and a youth coach in rural Bohemia, about 100 kilometres southeast of Prague. She has been retired from competition for three decades. But her career may soon be shaken retroactively as track and field officials attempt to restore credibility to a sport hit by repeated doping scandals.
European Athletics made a striking proposal in May to have the sport’s global governing body void all world records set before 2005. That year the storage of blood and urine samples began for more sophisticated drug screenings. Forty-five outdoor records are at stake, including Florence Griffith Joyner’s women’s records at 100m (10.49sec) and 200m (21.34sec) set in 1988.
In announcing the “radical” recommendation, Svein Arne Hansen of Norway, president of the European track association, said: “Performance records that show the limits of human capabilities are one of the great strengths of our sport, but they are meaningless if people don’t really believe them.”
The proposal, which would recognise records set only by athletes who undergo a strict regimen of drug testing, is being refined before being decided upon by track’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations.
But the proposal has sparked outrage among the record holders themselves – including Kratochvilova – who feel that they are being judged guilty of doping by association.
They do have one important point: there is no proof that every record set before 2005 was aided by doping and no guarantee that every record achieved since then was unassisted by banned substances.
Revoking records would be “complete nonsense”, Kratochvilova said. “I have never taken banned substances,” she said.
Her case is extremely complicated and illustrates the murkiness that will challenge any good-faith attempt to reconsider who should be worthy of a world record.
This will be especially true of athletes who grew up behind the Iron Curtain and competed during the 1980s, when sport in the Eastern bloc was used as propaganda to promote communism.
Elite athletes there often had little or no choice but to participate in state-sponsored doping programmes. To refuse was to risk not being allowed to train for the Olym- pics or other major international competitions, where victory could mean national glory and perks such as an apartment or a car.
For decades, questions have persisted about whether Kratochvilova’s heavily muscled body and speed were achieved naturally or augmented by the illicit use of anabolic steroids. She has always denied using steroids and has attributed her physique and success on the track to the rigours of farm life as well as voluminous weight training and vitamins.
Record ‘will still be in my head’
Yet documents viewed by the New York Times indicate Kratochvilova’s name appeared in 1984 and 1987 in association with Czechoslovakia’s secret and systematic doping programme, known by the euphemism of “specialised care”. One document is a list of track and field athletes to be selected for a more centralised version of the programme.
A second document detailed the results of an internal doping control test used to flag athletes who would risk testing positive for banned substances at international competitions. Kratochvilova’s test showed up as negative, according to the document.
The documents cast suspicion but do not provide indisputable confirmation that Kratochvilova used banned substances, anti-doping officials have said.
Even if her record is abolished, Kratochvilova said, “it will still be in my head and the heads of others”.
On July 26, 1983, at a meet in Munich, Kratochvilova ran the 800m in the stunning time of 1:53.28, shattering the previous record of 1:53.43. Only one runner has come within a second of her performance in the nearly 34 years since. The winning time in the women’s 800m at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro was a full two seconds slower.
On August 10, 1983, at the world track and field championships in Helsinki, Kratochvilova set another world record of 47.99 seconds in the 400m. Her record has been broken, but it remains the second fastest time ever.
On the official television broadcast, a British commentator said in evident wonder at her power: “Just look at the build of Kratochvilova – built almost like a field event athlete.”
Others offered harsh assessments of Kratochvilova’s physique. An article in the Chicago Sun-Times from Helsinki carried the headline: “Is Czech star really a she?”
Leroy Perry, a US chiropractor who has consulted with many athletes, told the Sun-Times: “I’ve never seen a female athlete, unaided by male hormones, that strong.”
So what should be done with the older records?
Jaroslav Nekola, who became the founding director of the Czech AntiDoping Committee in 1990, shortly after communism in Czechoslovakia fell peacefully during the Velvet Revolution, said any revoking of records should carry an asterisk.
It should be clearly stated, he said, that athletes participating in state-sponsored systems were victims – they were treated like “guinea pigs”, essentially left with no choice if they wanted to remain at the elite level and enlisted in a scheme where sport could not be separated from Cold War politics.
“If we cancel the records, automatically athletes will be the guilty ones in the eyes of the public, but the true guilt lies with the system,” Nekola said. He added: “I do not want individual athletes to be judged. But I believe we must judge the system that required them to take banned substances.”