100 metres, Women

The 1991 World Champion and 1990 European Champion at 100 and 200 metres was Katrin Krabbe (GER). Krabbe was a tall, attractive blonde who seemed ready to capitalize on her fame and beauty with endorsements not previously available to her as an East German. However, early in 1992, she and some of her teammates went to train in South Africa. There were accusations that this was done to avoid drug testing and the Germans responded by sending a testing team down there. All of the women tested negative but then it was revealed that all of the urine samples had come from the same person. They were all suspended for four years by the German Track Federation but, after appeals to the IAAF, this was revoked. Nonetheless, in June, Krabbe withdrew from the Olympics because of the stress she had been through in the past few months. In July, she did test positive, this time for clenbuterol, and she never competed again.

Krabbe’s absence left the 1992 100 relatively wide open, with no clear favorite. The runner-up at the 1991 Worlds had been American Gwen Torrence, while the world leader going into Barcelona was Jamaica’s Merlene Ottey. But the gold medal went to America’s Gail Devers in one of the closest finishes ever. Coming to the line, there was almost nothing to separate the top five runners, but Devers’ lean won the gold by 0.01 in 10.82 over Jamaican Juliet Cuthbert, with Russian Irina Privalova (EUN) another hundredth back in third. Torrence was only 4/100ths behind Devers in fourth, and Ottey ran 10.88 in fifth.

Shortly after the final, Torrence noted that “two of the three medalists were not clean”, effectively accusing them of doping, although she never identified those she accused. She retracted that statement a few days later, and came back to win the 200 gold.