Cheats and corruption
The history of drugs in athletics
1968
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) conducts its first doping control urine tests at the Mexico City Olympics.
1975
Anabolic steroids are added to the IOC’S list of banned substances.
1988
Sprinter Ben Johnson, right, is stripped of his Seoul Olympics 100m gold for Stanozolol abuse. His 9.79s world record is purged from record books.
1999
The World Anti-doping Agency (Wada) is formed.
2000
Forty of China’s 300 Olympic athletes are mysteriously withdrawn days before the Sydney Games. Seven are known to have failed tests.
2003
EX-US Olympic Committee doctor Wade Exum claims American athletes failed more than 100 drugs tests between 1988 and 2000, winning 19 championship medals.
2003
Coach Trevor Graham claims Bay Area Laboratory Co-op (Balco) and founder, Victor Conte, distributed untraceable steroids to at least 30 athletes.
2004
Legal papers reveal up to 2000 athletes involved in doping in former East German
regime may be suffering from severe physical and mental health problems as a result.
2007
US athlete Marion Jones, right, is stripped of the three gold and five bronze medals she won in Sydney, after she admits using Balco’s designer steroid ‘the Clear’ in the early 2000s.
2008
Jones is jailed for lying to investigators over drug use.
2014
Russia is accused of statesponsored doping. Former Wada chief Dick Pound is asked to investigate.
2015
IAAF boss Papa Diack is among three senior officials banned for life for blackmail and covering up positive tests.
2016
A third of Olympic and World Championships endurance medals from 2001 to 2012, including 55 golds, may be tainted by drugs, leaks show.
2016
Russia’s team is banned from the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio for participation in the country’s doping programme.
2016
Russia refutes the findings of the Mclaren report into its doping and cover-up activities at the Summer and Winter Olympics of 2012 and 2014, and the 2013 World Championships.
2017
Xue Yinxian, a former Chinese Olympic doctor, says more than 10,000 Chinese athletes were forced to take performance-enhancing drugs during the Eighties and Nineties.