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Principles of Sports Medicine & Exercise Science

Track-and-Field Champion Heike Dreschler Doping Scandal

by Jack Ewing

Category: Sport, track and field (long jump)

Specialties and related fields: Athletic training, personal training, strength and conditioning, track and field

Definition: a German former track and field athlete who represented East Germany and later Germany and was one of the most successful long jumpers of all-time

KEY TERMS

East Germany: officially the German Democratic Republic, was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in middle Germany as part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War

long jump: a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength, and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point

EARLY LIFE

Heike Dreschler was born Heike Gabriela Daute on December 16, 1964, in Gera, East Germany (now in Germany). She lost her father in an untimely accident at a fairground when he was only thirty-one. Her mother, a shift worker, was left to raise Heike and three other children.

Heike was groomed for greatness as a part of the old East German sports system. Throughout her lengthy and successful career as a long jumper, sprinter, and heptathlete, she seldom failed to live up to her country’s expectations.

Behind the Iron Curtain, success in sports translated into money, privilege, and power. Knowing that Heike’s family encouraged her to pursue sports. Tall, agile, and strong for her age, Heike was spotted by German coaches when she was a schoolgirl and was recruited for track and field. She quickly established herself as an international star and became one of the premier female long jumpers of all time.

As a teen, Heike was involved in the Free German Youth, an official organization of the German Democratic Republic that attempted to indoctrinate young athletes in Marxist-Leninist Communist philosophy. As allegedly revealed in documents found after the fall of the Berlin Wall, by 1983, she had become an informer for the East German secret police unit nicknamed the “Stasi.” Heike, whose code name was Springen (Jump), regularly reported to the authorities on the activities of her teammates.

THE ROAD TO EXCELLENCE

In 1981, at seventeen, Heike made her international debut by setting a world junior record in the heptathlon with 5,812 points. Then she set two records in the long jump. As of 2008, the last record of 23.43 feet (7.14 meters) still stood. At the time, she was 5 feet 11 inches, and her slim athletic build and world-class speed made her an immediate threat in the senior ranks.

After moving up to face elite competition at her first World Track and Field Championships in 1983, Heike won her first world title in the long jump. She became the youngest athlete at nineteen to win a gold medal. In the process, she also upset the reigning world-record holder Ani oara Cu mir-Stanciu of Romania. As an East German heroine, Heike was elected as a representative to the Volkshammer (The People’s Chamber) of the bicameral East German legislature in 1984.

THE EMERGING CHAMPION

Heike continued her winning streak by compiling more titles and places in the record books in long jumping and sprinting. In 1986, she won the indoor 100-meter title at East Germany’s national championships and equaled countrywoman Marita Koch’s world-record time of 21.71 seconds in the 200 meters. From 1982 through 1996, Heike won 206 of 245 long-jump competitions, including her one-hundredth victory at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain.

One of Heike’s major claims to fame as an athlete was her spirited rivalry with some of the best American track athletes. In competitions with Jackie Joyner-Kersee, she tallied five of the top ten all-time best jumps, while Joyner-Kersee garnered three. Joyner-Kersee won their head-to-head contest at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea; however, with a record-breaking performance, Heike had to settle for the silver medal.

Heike continued her competitive streak in the long jump against American Marion Jones. In 1999, she beat Jones with a jump of 22.41 feet to 22.24 feet and was the only woman to defeat Jones at any event during the 1998 season. At the World Cup in Athletics in Johannesburg, South Africa, Heike ended Jones’s winning streak of thirty-six competitions, beating her by 2.76 inches with a jump of 23.20 feet.

CONTINUING THE STORY

Few athletes enjoyed Heike’s longevity and domination. However, she continued to perform for more than fifteen years after joining the elite level at thirty-five. In 1999, Heike competed in her seventh consecutive World Track and Field Championships in Seville, Spain. Only German discus thrower Jürgen Schult and Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey have equaled Heike’s streak.

In 2000, competing for Germany, Heike won her second Olympic gold medal in the long jump, eight years after her first. Her jump beat those of Jones and Italian Fiona May. She never expected to win the gold and stated that the 2000 Olympics was her last.

Heike’s success in sports was remarkable, considering she took time out to start a family. She married soccer player Andreas Dreschler and petitioned the German sports federation for permission to have a baby in the prime of her competitive career. After much debate, German officials relented, and Heike gave birth to her first child, daughter Toni, on November 1, 1989, just eight days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Divorced from Dreschler, Heike moved with her son to Karlsruhe, Germany, with French decathlete and former European champion Alain Blondel. However, she continued to train with her former father-in-law, Erich Dreschler.

POSpKin_p0501_0001.jpg

Photo by Bundesarchiv, via Wikimedia Commons.

Once the Iron Curtain fell, Heike capitalized on her fame by signing lucrative endorsement deals. At the start of 1995, she left Jena, her club of fifteen years, for an attractive offer at Chemnitz, which included a deal to be a spokeswoman for a health insurance company. In 1999, she was among those considered for the International Association of Athletic Federation’s (IAAF’s) female athlete of the century. However, the honor went to Fanny Blankers-Koen, a Dutch sprinter who flourished between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. Heike was nominated for the IAAF’s women’s committee and, in 2007, was elected as the German representative.

SUMMARY

Heike Dreschler stood out as a superior athlete years after her affiliation with an East German athletic regime that employed systematic doping. Her long jumping earned her three world titles, two Olympic gold medals, four European titles, and three world records. She was the first woman to jump beyond 25 feet (7.62 meters) and cleared 22.96 feet (7 meters) more than four hundred times during her career, setting a record. Equally skilled as a sprinter, Heike won bronze medals in the 100 meters and 200 meters at the Seoul Olympics, a silver medal in the 100 meters at the 1987 Rome World Track and Field Championships, a bronze medal in the 4x100-meter relay at Tokyo in 1991, a gold medal in the 200 meters at the 1986 European Championships in Athletics, and a silver medal in the 200 meters at the 1990 European Championships in Athletics.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Ewing, Jack. "Track-and-Field Champion Heike Dreschler Doping Scandal." Principles of Sports Medicine & Exercise Science, edited by Michael A. Buratovich, Salem Press, 2022. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=POSpKin_0154.

APA 7th

Ewing, J. (2022). Track-and-Field Champion Heike Dreschler Doping Scandal. In M. A. Buratovich (Ed.), Principles of Sports Medicine & Exercise Science. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Ewing, Jack. "Track-and-Field Champion Heike Dreschler Doping Scandal." Edited by Michael A. Buratovich. Principles of Sports Medicine & Exercise Science. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2022. Accessed September 16, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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