The team behind the programme have provided further details - including the names of three weightlifters suspected of providing false samples - in response to statements by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) and Hungary's national anti-doping agency (HUNADO).

They claim their evidence regarding finance and doping shows that some of the comments made, including by the IOC, were misleading or innacurate.

Meanwhile, Tamás Aján, the long-standing IWF President who was the focus of much of the documentary, has refused a request for an emergency meeting of his Executive Board and has written to all 192 Member Federations of the world governing body.

Aján wrote he "personally, categorically" denies accusations made against him and the IWF, where he has been general secretary and President since 1976.

Accusations made in Secret Doping - the Lord of the Lifters by the German state broadcaster ARD were "very serious and worrying", the IOC said.

There were claims of doping cover-ups and financial mismanagement by the IWF, which it has strenuously denied, and revelations of children taking steroids in Thailand, where weightlifting is the most successful Olympic sport.

The Thai Amateur Weightlifting Association, run by the IWF's first vice-president Intarat Yodbangtoey and his wife, Boossaba, denied allegations of widespread doping of young lifters.

Questions were also raised about the performance of HUNADO, which was favoured for years by the IWF and worked on nearly 80 per cent of the 16,000 tests studied by ARD's team.

The new ARD evidence concerns allegations of millions of dollars going "missing" after being placed in Swiss bank accounts accessible only by Aján; and the use of "doppelgangers" by weightlifters whose samples were collected by doping control officers from HUNADO.

The ARD team also refuted the IOC statement that "contrary to what ARD is claiming, it [the IOC] was not in possession of 'most of the documents' on which the film is based".

In a section of their latest report labelled "IOC knows most of the documents", the ARD investigators said the IOC had long held "documents relating to the transactions surrounding Swiss bank accounts" and that the documentary team had a letter confirming this, signed by then director of the IOC legal department in 2011.

Investigators also contradicted the IWF versions of events regarding the "missing millions" - money paid to the IWF by the IOC, valued at between $5.5 million (£4.2 million/€4.9 million) and $8 million (£6.1 million/€7.1 million) - quoting as evidence a 44-page judgement by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Antonio Urso, the Italian President of the European Weightlifting Federation, had complained about the "missing" money to the IOC and CAS but, as CAS stated: "The IOC President [then Jacques Rogge] refused to refer the case to the Ethics Committee."

CAS ruled at the time that neither the IOC nor CAS had jurisdiction to intervene in the internal accounts of an International Federation; seven years later the IOC claimed it has changed its Code of Ethics and will "properly address" the evidence.

The documentary team challenged the IWF statement about the money - "it was finally established that no money was missing…" - and said "there was no official clarification of the allegations".

HUNADO also issued a strongly worded refutation of the documentary claims about the performance of some of its doping control officers.

A team doctor from Moldova claimed that "clean" tests could be bought for between $60 (£45/€55) and $200 (£150/€180), that "doppelgangers" would provide urine samples, and that HUNADO employees could be bribed.

The latest version from ARD is: "HUNADO contradicted the ARD reporting… [but] the samples from three Moldovan weightlifters that had been tested by the Hungarian inspectors on October 13 2014, showed suspicion of urine manipulation in the Cologne doping control laboratory.

"A year later, at the 2015 World Championships in Houston, the same athletes - Ghenadie Dudoglu, Artiom Pipa and Iurie Bulat - were exposed as dopers.

"The Cologne laboratory also examined older samples of these three athletes and found suspicious moments in the samples from 2014."

One further claim by the ARD team was that Lasha Talakhadze, the super-heavyweight Olympic and world champion from Georgia, had not undergone any out-of-competition tests commissioned by the IWF in 2015 and 2016.

While that is true, evidence provided by the Georgian Weightlifting Federation shows that Talakhadze was tested many times in those years, out of competition, by Georgia's anti-doping agency and the European Anti-Doping Agency.