Petra Schneider

East German individual medley swimmer who won Olympic gold at the 1980 Moscow Games and later publicly admitted to having been doped as part of East Germany's state program.

Born in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), East Germany, on 11 January 1963, Petra Schneider rose to prominence at the 1978 World Championships, finishing behind rival Tracy Caulkins of the United States. From 1980 onward she dominated the individual medley events, setting a world record of 4:36.10 in the 400m IM at the Moscow Olympics that stood for 15 years. Schneider won Olympic gold in the 400m individual medley at the 1980 Moscow Games and added a silver in the 400m freestyle. She repeated the medley double at the 1982 World Championships in Ecuador, again beating Caulkins, and was named Swimming World's World Swimmer of the Year in both 1980 and 1982. The Soviet bloc's boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics ended her Olympic career prematurely. In the mid-1990s, following German reunification and the exposure of East Germany's state-run doping program, State Plan 14.25, Schneider became one of the first former GDR swimmers to publicly admit she had been doped, saying her records were 'influenced by doping'. In 2005, she asked for her own national record to be struck from the books. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1989, though her plaque there now carries a disclaimer noting the doping revelations, and Swimming World later stripped her of her World Swimmer of the Year titles. After retiring, Schneider trained as a teacher and later worked as a swimming coach in Chemnitz.

Powerful, endurance-based individual medley swimmer

Her career is inseparable from East Germany's state doping program, which she later publicly acknowledged