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Sharron Davies learned to swim at 6, made the British national team at 11, competed in her first Olympics at 13 and won her first gold medal at 15. Her career achievements include a slew of British records and nine Olympic/Commonwealth/European medals. 1/ 
Also, Davies is a mermaid. A freaking mermaid!! Here is a statue of a mermaid modelled on Davies. 2/
Of her medal haul, two were Commonwealth golds. However, admiration of Davies’ prodigious career has always been footnoted by the lack of Olympic gold, with her highest Olympic achievement the silver medal in the 400m individual medley at Moscow 1980. 3/
Petra Schneider won that 1980 Olympic race, finishing over ten seconds ahead of Davies, and taking the gold medal. It was the highlight of an astonishing year where Schneider broke the world record three times in five months. 4/
Between 1980 and 1983, Schneider would win eight European/World/Olympic medals. 5/
It seems unusual to focus on the medals an athlete didn’t win, a little snarky even. But Davies was not only ten seconds behind the winner, she could well have been 10 nM of testosterone behind her. 6/
Schneider was a product of East Germany and State Plan 14.25, the Cold War doping programme enforced onto young athletes as part of the GDR’s ideological quest to dominate the West, using athletes as part of their propaganda. 7/
Recruited into training camps while young, thousands of talented children were given “vitamin pills” of testosterone, growth hormones and other performance enhancers. Manfred Ewald, head of the GDR sports federation: “They’re still so young and don’t have to know everything”. 8/
Intensive training for several hours a day, every day, yielded the desired athletic success. The GDR Olympic medal count grew; 9 golds in 1968, 20 in 1972, 40 in 1976, then 47 in 1980, including Schneider’s. 9/
Positive doping tests at international level were avoided by screening athletes pre-competition. Those with detectable “anabolica” were withdrawn from competition. Those who did not know they had been doped were given false medical results to justify their exclusion. 10/
The human cost of this sporting success was high. The sheer volume of training produced injury and permanent damage, with young teenagers requiring daily injections of painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Many were permanently disabled. 11/
The long term effects of testosterone on female athletes has been devastating, left to cope with extreme and irreversible virilisation, reproductive issues, kidney, liver and cardiac damage. Schneider herself is on permanent medication for heart problems. 12/
And today, we have learned of the premature death of Andrea Pollack, a GDR swimmer who won two golds at the 1976 Olympics. In 1998, Pollack went public about the doping she was subject to at the hands of her state. 13/
Schneider has admitted that she was unknowingly doped. The swimming world has stripped her of various accolades. The IOC, petitioned by the British Olympic Association and Davies herself, and even considering personal admissions, has refused to withdraw her gold medal. 14/
Schneider was undeniably a victim of a barbaric state policy, but Davies was a victim too. And Davies knows only too well what can be lost when you're competing against testosterone. End of Part One/
A note: This was intended to be a thread about Davies, with only a brief nod to the GDR regime. However, the story of GDR doping was so heart-rending to research (even just briefly) that I couldn't leave it with a brief nod.
