Katharina Bullin

Katharina Bullin was on the 1980 East German women’s volleyball team at the Moskva Olympics. The team won the silver medal, losing twice against the Soviet Union, in the preliminary round and the final, both times by 3-1 in set scores. In 1977 and 1979, she was on teams that won silver medals at the European Championships. Nationally, she played with SC Dynamo Berlin helping them win East German titles in 1975, 1978, and 1979. In 1978 the team won the European Cup Winners’ Cup.

Without Bullin’s knowledge she was given anabolic steroids, including testosterone, and other drugs that were mixed into her food, given to her as vitamin pills, and she also received injections, to enable her to train and perform at higher levels. She trained for up to 50 hours a week in addition to being made to take the performance enhancing drugs.

After the 1980 Olympics Bullin was kicked off the national team as she was thought not good enough for future international matches. She then fell into a spiral of addiction to alcohol and pills but later recovered and re-built her life.

Bullin later sought compensation for the longtime doping abuse. Despite 12 surgeries, she developed chronic pain, her body took on a masculine appearance, and she needed to keep training to maintain a minimum level of mobility. In 2005, a documentary film about her life was published at the Berlin International Film Festival, entitled Katharina Bullin – Und ich dachte, ich wär’ die Größte (Katharina Bullin – and I Thought I Was the Greatest).