A former East German coach on trial for doping admitted yesterday he had administered steroids to female swimmers.

Rolf Glaeser confessed to a Berlin court that he had given pills containing the banned drug OralTurinabol.

Glaeser, one of six swimmimg officials whose trial opened in March, apologised for his role in the former communist state's doping policy.

"I want to apologise sincerely for what happened to them (the swimmers) during the long years they were under my guidance," Glaeser told the court.

The six, who worked for Berlin club Dynamo, are accused of damaging the health of female swimmers by giving them steroids in the 1970s and '80s.

Glaeser said the pills were handed to him by doctor Dieter Binus, also on trial.

Binus admitted last month that he had given tablets containing anabolic steroids, but said that he believed the dosages - a maximum of 1,000 milligrams per year - had not been dangerous.

Christiane Sommer, one of the swimmers who trained with Glaeser, said: "I acknowledge his apology and I must now think it over and decide how I react to it."

A similar trial of five officials who worked for another Berlin club, TSC, ended last week when three were convicted of damaging the health of their charges and fined up to £15,000. The other two were also fined but had the cases against them dropped.

It was the first success in German prosecutors' long campaign against officials who practised doping in East Germany.

The prosecutors, from a special team probing crimes linked to German unification, say the officials were carrying out a policy approved at the highest level of the East German state.

In Madrid yesterday, IOC drugs chief Prince Alexandre de Merode faced renewed calls for his resignation over his comments that Spanish doctors had been lax in their approach to doping.

De Merode said last week: "In Spain, there has for a long time been a tendency towards doping."

The Spanish Olympic Committee called for an immediate retraction or resignation.

He later clarified his remarks, saying there was a tendency towards doping in every country in the world and that he had only used Spain as an example because IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch is Spanish.

But that explanation failed to satisfy the Spanish Federation of Sports Medicine, which has called for de Merode's resignation because of the "grave effects (of his comments) on the honour of Spanish doctors who are working in this field".