Dagmar HASE

Dagmar Hase was a long-distance specialist in freestyle and backstroke. At the European Championships she earned six gold, four silver and two bronze medals between 1989 and 1997, amongst them two golds in the 400 free in 1993 and 1997. She also took part in three Long-Course Worlds in 1991, 1994 and 1998, winning two golds, three silvers and one bronze medal, with 200 backstroke silvers in 1991 and 1998. Hase won seven Olympic medals, crowned by her 1992 gold in the 400 freestyle, winning three medals in 1992 and four in 1996.

At the World Championships in 1994 she qualified for the 200 metres freestyle as the eight best swimmer but her teammate Franziska van Almsick swam only the ninth best qualification time. Therefore Hase abandoned her start place and offered it to van Almsick, who then won the gold medal in the final bettering the world record. At the same competition Hase herself swam only the ninth best qualification time over 400 metres freestyle, but her teammate Jana Henke (later sixth in the final) did not abandon her starting place, although Hase would have had the better chances.

After the 1991 German reunification Hase came under doping suspicion by Brigitte Berendonk and the documents of the Military Medical Academy in Bad Saarow, which was also confirmed in the GDR doping investigation between 1998 and 2000. It was later announced that Hase, along with Kristin Otto, Heike Friedrich and Daniela Hunger, had taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) at the 1989 European Championships at Bonn. The testosterone levels of these female swimmers corresponded to normal male values, but Hase always denied taking PEDs.