Thirty years ago, on October 6, 1985, East German athlete Marita Koch ran the 400m in a world record time of 47.6 seconds.
To put it into perspective, it was more than one and a half seconds quicker than American Allyson Felix clocked to take gold at this year’s World Athletics Championships in Beijing.
Koch’s record, set at the World Cup in Canberra, Australia, has been the subject of much debate in the intervening 30 years.
That’s because:
No-one has come close to breaking it;
And Koch competed in an era when East Germany was known to be systematically doping its athletes.
However, Koch, now 58, never failed a drugs test and has always maintained she did nothing wrong.
What does Koch say?
She does not give many interviews, but, at the end of 2014, she told BBC athletics reporter Ed Harry: “I don’t have to prove anything to myself.
“I have a clear conscience. I can only repeat myself… I never tested positive, I never did anything which I should not have done at that time.
“I didn’t achieve the world record out of nowhere. I had previously improved my time on five occasions, in slow steps, around the 48-second mark, and at some point it became a world record.
“Also, all world records are certainly in some way an exception, so now the next person has to come, or has to be born, who is ready to break the record. At some point, that time will come.”
