Initially a very competitive long jumper early in her career as a teenager, Drechsler made a transition into the world of elite sprinting in 1986 at the age of 21.

Drechsler's 200 m performance of 21.71 seconds into a head wind (−0.8 m/s) is one of the fastest ever run by a woman in the history of track and field.

[10] In 2001, the BBC claimed she has admitted to unknowingly taking prohibited substances in the early 1980s under orders from her team doctors.

[11] In 1991, after the fall of East Germany, Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke found several theses and dissertations quoting former GDR doping researchers in the Military Medical Academy Bad Saarow (MMA).

The basis of the work reconstructed state-organized doping practices involving many well-known GDR athletes, including Heike Drechsler.

Indications were that Heike Drechsler used high doses of Oral Turinabol plus more testosterone ester injections before competitions from 1982 to 1984.

[14][15] However, Drechsler continued to win titles after the DDR time (after 1989), when she started for the merged German team and was tested regularly.