Doping Top Secret: Children

The dream of fame – and the fatal first step into a dark world

For millions of children worldwide, competitive sport is tied to great hopes: success and recognition, a glorious career, or social advancement. An estimated 195 to 260 million minors worldwide take part in competitive sport. Many of them have no idea how dangerous this can be.

In the Dominican Republic, baseball is something close to a religion and, at the same time, a lifeline for escaping poverty. This is where the exceptionally talented Joel Ortiz grows up. A career in the multi-billion-dollar US professional league, MLB, awaits him. But the dream comes at a price: unscrupulous support staff push him into doping, and a toxic spiral begins.

In Canada, 15-year-old Geneviève Jeanson is determined to become a cycling world champion. Her coach trains her with brutal severity and forces her to dope with EPO. In Italy, top cycling talent Linas Rumšas, son of a former Tour de France star, dies suddenly of heart failure. Investigators are facing a mystery.

And in Berlin, a young cyclist dreams of a professional career. His idol is German star Jan Ullrich. His coach sees only one way forward: the boy must take performance-enhancing drugs.

Behind the glossy façade, a wall of silence

With the help of the blood-doping drug EPO, Geneviève Jeanson becomes a junior world champion, but she remains a prisoner of her coach. No one can know that he is pushing her to dope while crossing both physical and psychological boundaries. The greatest talent in women’s cycling is only at the start of a years-long ordeal.

In the Dominican Republic, Joel Ortiz has to endure illegal “cleaning” at night to flush the banned substances out of his body before a mandatory doping test by MLB officials. Meanwhile, investigators looking into the death of Linas Rumšas encounter a wall of silence.

In Poland, 14-year-old rower Szymon Pogorzelec slides into the doping scene at a state-run elite sports school. Frustrated by competitors he believes are doped, he orders substances online – and secretly becomes a dealer.

In Gilching, near Munich, a doping control officer who works around the world describes his mixed feelings about conducting doping tests on children.

And in South Africa, officials explain the scale of the doping problem in schoolboy rugby. Campwill Willemse, one of the players caught, tells how he began doping without knowing the full risks.

Caught in a web of profiteers – when adults use children as tools

The ARD team’s undercover investigations expose a brutal business: In the Dominican Republic, a coach boasts on hidden camera about his expertise in doping children as young as eight to ten.

Joel Ortiz breaks down within this system: his body collapses – just before he is due to move into one of MLB’s academies. In Canada, Geneviève Jeanson falls under suspicion of doping after an abnormal blood test, while she desperately struggles to keep going under her coach’s brutal control.

In Italy, wiretap transcripts incriminate Linas Rumšas’s father. Is the disgraced cycling star Raimondas Rumšas doping his own children?

In Germany, a young track and field athlete persuades her friend to hand over pills that she received from her coach. They turn out to be banned steroids. It is only thanks to this informant that the biggest child-doping case in Germany since reunification is uncovered: involving athletics coach Thomas Springstein.

And in United States, another undercover investigation exposes a doctor who appears willing to prescribe performance-enhancing drugs to a 12-year-old tennis player, even though the child has no medical need.

When the body fails and the soul breaks – the high price of betrayal

Child doping leaves devastating damage to bodies and minds around the world. Joel Ortiz is in intensive care with acute kidney failure and an inflamed heart muscle. Geneviève Jeanson suffers from a fear of death because of her coach’s violent outbursts and the side effects of EPO use. Investigating Linas Rumšas’s death leads investigators into the darkest corners of cycling.

In the United States, 17-year-old baseball player Taylor Hooton takes his own life after suffering from depression linked to steroid use. His parents try to protect other young athletes from a similar fate. Nevertheless, snowboarder Michael Smith talks about surviving a recent suicide attempt after testing positive for steroids.

Olympic ski jumping champion Hans-Georg Aschenbach speaks for the first time, with disturbing openness, about a widely unknown consequence of steroid doping in childhood: the shocking effects on young athletes’ sexual behavior and on their relationship with sexuality in adulthood. Now 75, he still suffers from it.

Lifelong damage and the silence of officials

Coming to terms with these tragedies amounts to a moral bankruptcy. In Italy the responsible forensic pathologist is convinced: Linas Rumšas died from heart damage caused by doping. Joel Ortiz suffers from chronic kidney disease and needs dialysis three times a week, while the rampant doping of children in the Dominican Republic continues. Meanwhile, in a television interview, Geneviève Jeanson tearfully confesses that she has been doping since the age of 16.

In Egypt, underage weightlifters Hanin and Hadir test positive. They say their coach had given them pills. In the end, the girls are banned for four years, while the officials get off lightly.

In Germany, the Thomas Springstein child-doping case has few consequences despite his conviction: numerous incriminating facts are swept under the rug, and witnesses are never even heard in court. Today, Springstein is coaching children again.

The courage to start over and the bitter realisation that the doping culture lives on

At least ten million minors worldwide are likely affected by child doping. One hotspot is India – the very country seeking to host the 2036 Olympic Games.

Those affected struggle with the consequences of their dark past. Geneviève Jeanson tells the Canadian Parliament about the rapes and death threats she endured from her coach as a minor. Today, she lives in constant fear of long-term effects of doping, such as cancer. Court proceedings against team officials and the father of Linas Rumšas are dropped due to the statute of limitations. The constant treatments are draining Joel Ortiz’s strength, until he suddenly learns that he is to receive a life-saving kidney transplant. Yet around the world, the ordeal of those who were doped continues.

In Germany, former East German swimmer Ute Krieger-Krause, who was doped with hormone pills as a child, suffers from severe depression. Nevertheless, she continues to educate children. In Berlin, young weightlifter Jacqueline Nygaard complains about tedious prevention seminars, while doping influencers reach millions of children via social media. In Norway, researchers discover that the performance-enhancing effects of child doping can persist into adulthood. Does the history of major sporting events have to be rewritten because of this so-called memory effect?