Career
Silai was banned for taking anabolic steroids in 1979 for 18 months. After 8 months she was reinstated after IAAF President Adriaan Paulen of the Netherlands said that an 18-month suspension in the steroid case would have kept the women out of the Moscow Olympics, which would have constituted "an extra penalty." He said that the IAAF Council had therefore reinstated them for "humane reasons.".