Most U.S. Olympians are treated as if they are royalty and have the respect from all of the country; however, the 1976 women’s swim team was treated unfairly because of their “bad attitudes.” While the American men’s team was bringing home most of the gold medals in each event, the women, who were predicted to win, only received one gold in the 400 relay.
Shirley Babashoff, Kim Peyton, Jill Sterkel, and Wendy Boglioli were the four top swimmers and were favored to win the majority of their events.
In the 1976 Olympic trials, Babashoff won all of her freestyle events and set many national records and a world record. She arrived at the Olympics prepared to win all of her events. She didn’t. Event after event, she kept losing to the East Germans. This losing, though, was just milliseconds behind the East Germans, and multiple times, she beat the world record along with the winner of the event.
Rightfully so, the women swimmers were upset with themselves and angry at the East Germans for winning. U.S. interviewers kept asking Babashoff what her problem was and why she was not winning all her races. Had they looked at her times and noticed that she was beating the world records, they would have maybe understood her aggressive reactions and responses to these questions. She was given the nickname “Surly Shirley” due to her loud and public complaints. In her first Olympics four years earlier, the East German swimmers had not been competition for her and so when they arrived bigger, stronger, and faster in 1976, it was a surprise.
In 2007, 167 of the former East German competitors were compensated for systematic doping of the DDR athletes between the years of 1973 - 1989. So Shirley Babashoff was right after all. There was no other explanation for how the East Germans were so competitive this year, other than steroids. Swimmers as young as 13 years old were being fed steroids.
Kornelia Ender and Petra Thümer were the two top scorers of medals from the East German team and since the 1976 Olympics, both have admitted to unknowingly doping in preparation for the Olympics. At the time, when their team doctors would give them pills or inject them, they would say that it was just to help them “regenerate and recuperate.” The young swimmers attributed their excessive muscle growth and deepening of their voice to their rigorous training.
While the DDR doping scandal was extremely unfair to the 1976 U.S. women swimmers, it was even more unfair to the children and young adults of the East German team that were being force fed substances without their knowledge. When interviewed, the American women agreed that they did not want to see the East German swimmers lose their medals and that they felt only sympathy towards them for the circumstances in which they were placed.
It is important to remember that making it to the Olympics is a huge feat and no matter how the athletes compete, they did something impossible for most people. The American women in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal would have been just as successful as their male counterparts had the East German swimmers not been subject to doping.
