Documentaries
TV reports
(selected)
(selected)
Brasil "doping-champion" of all World Cup Participants
Sportschau - 28.09.2025
A divided association, fraud allegations and athletes, that rather change the discipline - this is Germans Modern Pentathlon Association right now. The sporting aspect takes a back seat.
Doping Top Secret: DEALER
ARD - March 31, 2023
While researching this documentary, EyeOpening.Media tracked down a key figure in the international doping trade. The authors, led by Hajo Seppelt, prove that the Dane Jacob Sporon-Fiedler illegally imported anabolic steroids into the European Union. Sporon-Fiedler pulls the strings with his company Alpha Pharma from Mumbai, where EyeOpening.Media tracked him down.
Trouble in Germanys sport climbing scene
Sportschau - 10.06.2026
Controversial personnel decisions and frustrated athletes - in one of Germanys biggest sport associations tension between officials and athletes rises.
Doping Top Scret: NO LIMITS - When football knows no limits
ARD - December 1, 2022
The pressure in football continues to rise. Players raise the alarm and regularly resort to painkillers. At the World Cup, they are even allowed to use a highly addictive substance that even the WADA classifies as a performance enhancer.
DESG Asks Speed Skaters to Foot the Bill
Sportschau - April 22, 2026
An ARD investigation reveals that the German Speed Skating Association is being run by President Matthias Große in a non-transparent manner and essentially at his own discretion—primarily at the expense of the athletes.
Billion-dollar game amateur football - when the money comes in an envelope
ARD - 19 January 2022
At the heart of the research for this film is the largest online survey to date on the payment culture in German amateur football. The results reveal a massive financial problem: every year, illegal money totalling possibly 500 million euros flows into the leagues below professional football. A lot of money that is often paid in cash in envelopes - without those involved paying taxes and social security contributions.
Ski Mountaineering — Serious Allegations Cast a Shadow Over Olympic Debut
Olympic Games — February 20, 2026
Once again, a German sports federation is under scrutiny for its questionable treatment of athletes. At the Olympic debut of ski mountaineering, a sports director in a position of responsibility is facing criminal charges filed by athletes.
After anti-doping suspension: Passler is allowed to start at the Olympics
Sportschau - 13.02.2026
Italian biathlete Rebecca Passler has fought her way to an Olympic spot through a series of twists and turns—which comes as quite a surprise, at least when compared to similar doping cases.
Doping Top Secret: Guilty - How athletes can unintentionally become dopers
ARD - 16 July 2021
Positive through fleeting skin contact - this doping experiment calls the global anti-doping system into question and shocks athletes.
Researchers at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Cologne University Hospital administered small amounts of various anabolic steroids to twelve test subjects via the skin using a carrier substance - by briefly touching their hand, neck and arm. The initial analyses of the samples from all twelve test subjects by the renowned Cologne doping control laboratory revealed massive suspicion of doping. Up to fifteen days after the administration of the extremely low dose of anabolic steroids, traces were detectable in the laboratory.
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Chancellor’s Office Announces Investigation
Olympic Games - February 11, 2026
The ARD investigation into numerous irregularities in German speed skating has now drawn the attention of policymakers. The funding body is reviewing the facts, and athletes could also benefit.
Doping Top Secret: human experiments - the secret experiments in GDR sport
ARD - 26 February 2021
This documentary uncovers: GDR amateur athletes served as ‘guinea pigs’ for experiments that the stars and talents of the GDR were not supposed to be subjected to.
Many amateur athletes were given unresearched substances whose effects and side effects were often unknown. Unscrupulous doctors experimented on these unsuspecting people, sometimes using dangerous means and methods similar to those used in animal experiments. It was all about researching training methods, also with the aim of testing the performance-enhancing effects of doping agents before they were used on the regime's stars.
The olympic fairytale of "level playing field"
Sportschau - 07.02.2026
Fair competition rules? The Anti-Doping fight has significant gaps during the olympic games. An analysis by ARD-Dopingeditorial.
Modern Pentathlon in Germany - a discipline in danger?
Sportschau - 28.09.2025
A divided association, fraud allegations and athletes, that rather change the discipline - this is Germans Modern Pentathlon Association right now. The sporting aspect takes a back seat.
Doping Top Secret: pop the pill!
ARD - 9 June 2020
EyeOpening.Media worked with the non-profit research centre Correctiv for over a year to research ‘Geheimsache Doping: ’Hau rein die Pille! This film shows that the favourite sport in the country of the four-time world champion is often also a ‘pill kick’. And that many footballers take painkillers for one main reason: They want to increase their performance.
Doping Top Secret: the Lord of the Lifters - How an Olympic sport is being destroyed
ARD - 5 January 2020
This documentary film by EyeOpening.Media shows how unscrupulously the Olympic sport of weightlifting is being ruled. The authors go in search of clues in the realm of Hungarian Tamás Aján. He is a respected member of the Olympic family and has been President of the IWF since 2000.
According to the research, the world of weightlifting is one in which athletes have no say. A world in which the so-called anti-doping programme degenerates into a power game.
The film seeks answers to the question of how it can be that such a system exists and even flourishes under the guise of sport.
Coming to terms with violence in sport - ‘Then I was taken by surprise by being hit on the back’
Sports show - 10.12.2024
Following an ARD documentary, the German Swimming Association declared that it wanted to face up to its past and better deal with incidents of violence in the future. New ARD research shows how wishes and reality still diverge.
Doping Top Secret: trail to North Africa
ARD - 3 October 2019
Is Morocco a paradise for sports cheats? This film investigates this accusation. At the centre is the French long-distance runner Morhad Amdouni, the 2018 European champion.
Gender Battle - The outcast women of sport
ARD - 27 September 2019
Hormonal interventions only carried out because of the rules of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF): Uganda's former medal hopeful, Annet Negesa, makes serious accusations in this investigative documentary.
Doping Top Secret: The greed for gold - the path to the doping trap
ARD - 17 January 2019
The convicted doping offender and cross-country skier Johannes Dürr reports exclusively on ARD about his cheating methods. Austria's former cross-country skiing medal hopeful had blood doping help from Germany.
Doping Top Secret: Traitors - The consequences of the Russian case
ARD - 2 December 2018
Hajo Seppelt's research into the ‘Russian case’ has triggered landslide developments in world sport: bans, exclusions from the Olympics, court judgements, fake news attacks, dangerous escapes and worldwide athlete protests. Hacking attacks by spies, global political upheavals and mysterious deaths are also associated with the publications. It is now almost exactly four years since Russia's systematic state-sponsored doping hit the headlines worldwide.
This film takes stock and shows that four years after the discovery of Russian state-sponsored doping, there is still a lack of far-reaching consequences.
Doping Top Secret: Brazil's twelfth man
ARD - 1 July 2018
Brazil's heart beats for football. Millions are made from the sport in the country of the record-breaking world champion. Brazilian footballers are the export hit in the world's football leagues. It is a system in which dubious doctors also play a role, as research by EyeOpening.Media shows.
Doping Top Secret: Russia's football friends
ARD - 20 May 2018
The players of the Russian national football team may also have benefited from the cover-up system in Russian state doping. This is shown in this film, which was released shortly before the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
New doping discussions about Paralympics star Townsend
Paralympic Games - September 3, 2024
The US Anti-Doping Agency and its head Travis Tygart are the harshest critics of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers. During the Paralympics, the case of a US star is now being discussed, in which the Americans have to put up with uncomfortable questions.
Suspicion of fraud casts shadow on Para-Judo competitions
Paralympic Games - August 29, 2024
According to ARD research, para-judokas who are supposedly blind or severely visually impaired are competing in the Paralympics under massive suspicion of fraud. The World Federation of Blind Sports is keeping quiet. Above all, there is a classification system that practically invites trickery and deception.
WADA chief Banka rules out resignation - counter by Tygart
Sportschau Olympic Games - 10.08.2024
The WADA leadership is meeting with German sports politicians in Paris because of the scandal surrounding unsanctioned Chinese doping cases - and is facing massive criticism. USADA boss Tygart, meanwhile, counters WADA attacks in an ARD interview.
Doping controls: Paris threatens London's horror record
Sportschau Olympic Games - 06.08.2024
The fact that hardly any dopers have been caught during the Olympic Games in Paris is no surprise in a disillusioned scene. There is no need for new doping cases on the Seine - the frustration among clean athletes can hardly get any greater now.
"Blatantly bad" - how Germany fails to protect young athletes
Sportschau - 08.06.2024
While sports and politics argue behind the scenes about setting up the "Center for Safe Sport", new cases of abuse are regularly made public. They show how urgently Germany needs a central contact point for violent crimes in sport.
Doped into the dark blue hole
Sportschau - 04.02.2024
Freediving is one of the most dangerous extreme sports in the world. Now the scene is struggling with a doping problem. The world association is alarmed, not least because the number of accidents, some of which are life-threatening, is rising rapidly. Is there a connection?
Instagram photo puts boxer Sturm in trouble
Sportschau - 17.12.2023
An apparently carelessly posted photo showing them during an infusion may have criminal consequences for professional boxer Felix Sturm and a naturopath. Research by the ARD doping editorial team shows that the level of ignorance regarding prohibited infusions appears to be alarming in the sports scene.