Ann Osgerby, June Croft, Maggie Kelly and Helen Jameson are not household names. But they should be. Were it not for the state-sponsored doping of East Germany, they would all be Olympic champions.
Osgerby (now Inge), should have two gold medals and a bronze from the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games hanging up at home, rather than one solitary silver. ‘My life would have been completely different,’ she tells Mail Sport.
‘I wouldn’t be working my a*** off now at 60. I’ve just been at a house putting curtain rails up. It sounds really glamorous, doesn’t it?’
Inge, who is a seamstress in Somerset, swam the butterfly leg in the 4x100metres medley relay in Moscow, with Jameson on backstroke, Kelly on breaststroke and Croft on freestyle. The quartet finished 5.57sec behind East Germany, the second silver Great Britain claimed behind the cheating nation in the Moscow pool, after Sharron Davies lost out to Petra Schneider in the 400m individual medley.
The other gold Inge was robbed of came in the 100m butterfly, when she came fourth behind three doping East Germans. Her twin sister Janet was eighth and they entered the Guinness Book of Records as the first identical twins to appear in the same Olympic final.
June Croft, Ann Osgerby, Maggie Kelly and Helen Jameson were denied Olympic gold in 1980
A state-sponsored East German doping programme robbed the British swimmers of glory (pictured: Petra Schneider, who beat Davies in the 400m individual medley in Moscow)
That, though, was no consolation for the win she was denied by the dopers, while she also should have made the podium in the 200m butterfly, having come sixth behind three drug-fuelled swimmers. ‘You see what other gold medallists get, some of them earn millions,’ says Inge. ‘We didn’t get anything.’
That includes missing out on an MBE, something Britain’s five gold medallists from Moscow – athletes Allan Wells, Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson, as well as swimmer Duncan Goodhew – all received. ‘Gold is a lot different to silver,’ says Jameson, who now works as a business coach and whose brother Andy is a BBC swimming commentator and 1988 bronze medallist.
‘You are in a very different category. It means you get to make money out of the medal. You get paid to show up at events. I do feel sad that we missed out on things that could have made our lives completely different.’
Kelly adds: ‘A gold would have definitely changed everything. You get more respect, more acknowledgement. As a silver medallist, you don’t quite hit the mark.’
Like Inge, Kelly was also denied an individual medal, after finishing fourth in the 100m breaststroke, which was won by East German Ute Geweniger. Now 66, she recently retired having worked for the Nottingham Community Housing Association. ‘I’ve changed my competitive streak into who can have the best allotment,’ she smiles.
Were it not for the cheating, all four women would have been crowned Olympic champions
They have now reflected on being robbed and admitted their lives could have been different
Croft works one day a week as a cleaner at Grasmere Gingerbread Shop in the Lake District, having previously run a pub with her husband. She should have won another two medals in 1980, after coming sixth in the 200m butterfly behind three East Germans, and fourth in the 4x100m freestyle relay won by East Germany, along with Davies, Kaye Lovatt and Jackie Willmott. ‘Three medals would have been nice when I was 17,’ she says.
Only when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 was proof found of the East German programme of treating thousands of athletes with anabolic steroids. But how aware were Britain’s best swimmers that they were competing against cheats at the time?
Jameson laughs. ‘It was ridiculously obvious,’ she says. ‘Massively deep voices, the muscle definition, the speed that they were going. It was crazy. People would talk about men being in the women’s changing room.’
Inge recalls: ‘We walked in and walked out again because we thought we were in the wrong changing room. What frustrates me is that we were told not to talk about the East Germans taking drugs. Our coaches would say, “Don’t say that out loud, we don’t want to upset them”. But we all knew it. When you stood on the blocks, you thought, “I’m going to come second here because I’m stood next to a man”.’
Kelly remembers her dad calling out an East German swimmer in 1976, before the Olympics in Montreal. ‘I swam in a meet against a girl called Hannelore Anke and my dad said to someone, “There should be a stewards’ inquiry, this isn’t right”. But nobody did anything.’
Husain al-Musallam believes that the IOC must do ‘everything it can to right this wrong’
Croft, who also won a bronze in the 400m freestyle in Los Angeles 1984, says: ‘Everybody knew. They had men’s voices, hairy faces, acne. But they were drug-tested and they were clean because there was no out-of-competition testing.’
Even now, despite admissions by several East German athletes, the International Olympic Committee refuse to set the record straight, citing their 10-year statute of limitation. This does not wash with the wronged women.
‘Hiding behind the 10-year statute of limitation? What a load of rubbish. If it were you, and you found out you’d been taking stuff that was performance-enhancing, would you expect to keep your medal? I don’t think so. I think it should be addressed. If I were president of the IOC and got evidence that a whole country had been doping, I would feel it my obligation to rectify that.’
When Husain al-Musallam became president of World Aquatics in 2021, he said his governing body ‘must do everything it can to right this wrong’ and suggested awarding retrospective medals. But the power is in the IOC’s hands – and Davies has looked into launching a class action against them. ‘Us girls should get together and sort it out ourselves,’ says Inge. ‘But it’s been so long, it’d be a miracle.’
‘My kids are the ones who are pushing and saying, “Mum, you can’t give up”,’ says Kelly. ‘You never really get over it.’ Croft adds: ‘You see medals awarded retrospectively from 2012 and we are still waiting for ours from 43 years ago. Sharron keeps it going and good on her for that. Two years ago, I thought it might actually happen, but then nothing. We can keep fighting but I’m not holding my breath.’
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