Teenage athletes were also subjected to doping under communist East Germany’s vast programme of steroid abuse, a leading former sports official has admitted in his upcoming new book.

Thomas Koehler, former vice-president of the East German sports association DTSB, is the first high-ranking official to acknowledge that minors were also doped.

“When athletes participated (in doping programmes) from the age of 16, it was primarily done when their biological maturity was established,” Koehler writes in the book ‘The Two Sides of the Medal’.

Doping “had been planned for select elite athletes, who were generally adults.

“There were exceptions, however, for example in swimming – a sport where the optimum age is lower. But the only athletes included were those who were among the best,” he writes.