Armstrong worst drug cheat in history? I don't think so

There are reports emerging of Lance Armstrong's appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in which he was apparently less forthcoming about his sins than we might have hoped. He does, after all, stand condemned by the US anti doping agency and other regulatory bodies for what has been called "the most sophisticated and far reaching campaign of drug enhancement 'in history'". But aren't they forgetting something? How about the East German athletic team, where a corrupt state actively encouraged, and indeed, insisted upon, a culture of steroid usage for more than 20 years, thereby securing innumerable world championships and Olympic gold medals, virtually all of which are secure because the testing regime simply wasn't up to detecting them at the time.

Want an example? Try Marita Koch, who set the incredible time of 47.06 seconds for the 400 metres in 1986, a record which still stands, despite the (in athletic terms) immense lapse of time since. She and many other East German athletes have come clean over the years and admitted they were given no choice about whether they took performing enhancing drugs- the team boss's word was law, and so it was take the drugs or off to the Gulags.

What Lance Armstrong did was terribly wrong, but he was one guy determined to win at all costs. But compared to the deceitful actions of an entire state over two or more decades, what he did is relatively small beer.