A former East German female shot-putt champion has laid charges against her former doctor after allegations that he turned her into a man by over-prescribing anabolic steroids.

Heidi Krieger, the 1986 European champion, had two operations earlier this year to complete the process which she claimed had become irreversible. She had developed masculine features, including facial hair and an Adam's apple, and had suffered severe psychological problems.

Krieger, who has now changed his first name to Andreas, says he was forced to take the performance-enhancing drugs for several years in the 1980s by Dr Hans-Joachim Wendler under East Germany's clandestine State Plan 14.25, a meticulously-run government doping programme.

Papers unearthed by Dr Werner Franke, the investigator appointed by the German parliament to look into East German secret police files dealing with drugs in sport, show how women athletes were doped with male hormones under a four-year plan developed by scientists to get them to peak for the Olympic Games.

Anabolic steroids were used, especially in female sports where strength is a big factor. Wendler allegedly started giving Krieger male hormones in 1982 when she was 16, the year before she won the discus and shot at the European junior championships. Krieger was a member of SC Dynamo Berlin, the former Stasi secret service club, and claims athletes were told the pills they were given were vitamins.

She was one of the stars of East Germany's all-conquering women's team at the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart, making a huge improvement to win the gold medal for the shot putt with a throw of 21.10 metres. She finished fourth in the following year's world championships, but her career went into decline after that due to injury. The probe is the latest in a series launched by prosecutors into sports coaching in East Germany. Four swimming coaches, also employed by SC Dynamo Berlin, and two sports doctors were charged earlier this year with doping offences. Winfried Leopold will be allowed to leave for the world swimming championships in Australia today as the team's head coach, despite being under investigation himself.

Last year, prosecutors sent out questionnaires to former East German athletes, but many were not returned because athletes were not willing to admit their drug use.