The deep fall of a folk heroine

-She was one of the greatest athletes of her time, in her adopted homeland of Sweden she was a national heroine, also because of her dramatic story of surviving cancer, but the inglorious end of her sporting career has cast a shadow over her fortune.

Ludmila Engquist, Olympic champion in the 100 meter hurdles at the Atlanta Games, wanted to immortalize herself with a historic achievement at the Olympics in 2002: As a bobsledder, she wanted to be the first woman to win gold at both the Summer and Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

The daring project fell apart under scandalous circumstances: Engquist tested positive for anabolic steroids in 2001 and ended her career in tears, a fallen heroine. It was an affair that was as big in Sweden as the Jan Ullrich case here, perhaps even bigger.

The 60-year-old is back in the headlines with a new autobiography – in which she tells her side of the story. Engquist claims that they deliberately doped in order to get caught and leave everything behind. The Salt Lake City project was too much for her.

In the years before, Engquist had quickly won the hearts of an entire country: she had only become a Swedish citizen in 1996, after having been a top runner for the USSR and Russia under her previous name Ludmila Naroshilenko.

At the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo – legendary for the epic long jump duel between Mike Powell and Carl Lewis – Naroshilenko won her first world title. Two years later, however, she came under scrutiny for the first time when she was banned for four years for doping.

After another two years, Naroshilenko was granted an early pardon; she portrayed herself as the victim of a conspiracy: “My Russian husband mixed doping substances into my food out of jealousy.”

The second marriage to the Swedish competitor Johan Engquist also marked a new beginning in sport. Ludmila Engquist became a Swedish citizen – and with gold in Atlanta and at the World Championships in Athens in 1997 she became the role model of Swedish athletics.

Many people ignored her doping ban and the fact that experts expressed doubts about her all too cinematic claim of innocence. After the next dramatic twist in her story, the past was no longer an issue.

Engquist was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 1999, fought her way back onto the track after aborting chemotherapy, ran at the World Championships in August and won bronze. She was now more than just a top athlete, she was a role model who went beyond sport and inspired an entire country.

Because of an ankle injury, Engquist had to stop competing as an athlete, and the switch to bobsleighing and the 2002 mission were to be her last big coup. A positive test at the World Cup in Lillehammer in autumn 2001 ended the attempt.

Engquist admitted to doping, ended her career and withdrew completely from public life, accompanied by much disappointment and anger. The renewed scandal also increased doubts in Sweden about her claim that her previous scandal was a domestic plot. From Germany, doping expert Werner Franke, who died in 2022, spoke of incomprehension that a cancer survivor would resort to steroids and thus increase the risk of a recurrence of the disease, and spoke of “an outrage against one's own body”.

Was it Engquist's motivation? In her new book “Ludmila, Sweden can't be anyone”, which Swedish media are now quoting, she claims that her doping was a conscious act of self-sabotage.

In the summer of 2001, they bought and consumed protein powder contaminated with the illegal substance methandrostenolone in Russia. They wanted to get caught in order to find a way out of the Winter Olympics mission.

“I hated bobsleighing. It was a complete nightmare. Constant discomfort; before, during and after training – day and night,” says Engquist, adding that she became depressed and wanted to retire: “But it was impossible to back out, the pace was too fast and the stakes were too high, on all levels. Enormous efforts were made, prominent sponsors were involved and everything revolved around my name.”

The truth or another nice story to gloss over her doping history? It will remain a secret for Engquist, who now lives with her husband in Spain, far away from the Swedish public, who are still moved by her story.

Either way, Engquist has made her peace with her new role as a fallen heroine and is living her own life. Today, she can see something positive in her downfall, especially since without it she might not have become a mother later in life: “If I hadn't ruined my life with doping powder, Elias wouldn't have existed. I made big mistakes and am in a way a product of my failures. They have shaped me, for better or for worse.”