August 8, 2013
Study Says West Germany Engaged in
Sports Doping
By JERÉ
LONGMAN
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, so did the secrecy
around a pervasive, state-sponsored system of doping in communist East Germany
known by the Orwellian euphemism of “Supporting Means.”
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, so did the secrecy around a pervasive,
state-sponsored system of doping in communist East Germany known by the
Orwellian euphemism of “Supporting Means.”When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, so did the secrecy around a pervasive,
state-sponsored system of doping in communist East Germany known by the
Orwellian euphemism of “Supporting Means.”When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, so did the secrecy around a pervasive,
state-sponsored system of doping in communist East Germany known by the
Orwellian euphemism of “Supporting Means.”More than two decades later, a newly published study
has revealed that West Germany also began engaging in a government-financed plan
in the 1970s to boost athletic achievement through the use of banned
performance-enhancing drugs.
Although the West German government did not run its
program top-down as in East Germany, the study indicated the West Germans
engaged in systematic doping. It described experimentation with steroids on boys
as young as 11, along with such odd and dubious methods as trying to enhance
buoyancy in swimmers by injecting air into their colons.
The German revelations were the latest in a cascading
series of international doping scandals, which have included the repudiation of
Lance Armstrong, the suspension of 14 Major League Baseball players, the
positive tests of sprinters from the United
States and Jamaica, the supplying of drugs by crime gangs in Australia, and
the
barring of 31 track and field athletes in Turkey and 52 in India.
These scandals have produced a whipsawing effect. Some
sports officials feel encouraged and express more resolve to curtail the use of
prohibited substances, while some scientists and academics wonder whether
policing can ever be done effectively under the current sports structures.
“I think it’s a watershed moment for clean athletes,”
said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
Referring to the baseball suspensions, he said: “It gives hope to millions who
want to do it the right way. The right way has been supported and validated.”
Others view the German, baseball and track scandals as
a crisis of the legitimacy of elite sports.
“Even with all the testing, it’s like we’re moving two
steps forward and five steps back,” said Steven Ungerleider, an American sports
psychologist and the author of “Faust’s Gold,” a book that described the East
German doping system. “I don’t think we’re going to win this war. The more we
look into this, we’re going to see clusters of doping around the globe. We’re
going to see that in every country. Nobody should be surprised.”
The study of West German sports, from shortly after
World War II through the cold war and into the present in a reunified nation,
focused on the doping activities of the Federal Institute of Sports Science,
created in 1970 under the jurisdiction of West Germany’s Interior Ministry.
The sports institute financed studies of steroids,
testosterone, estrogen, growth hormones, insulin and blood boosters like EPO to
establish “systemic doping under the guise of basic research,” concluded the
study by researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of
Münster.
West Germany won far fewer Olympic medals than East
Germany between 1968 and 1988, when the countries competed separately. But West
Germany had similar ambitions, the study noted. The involvement of coaches,
sports doctors and officials in the doping program suggested that a “subtle
approximation” of the East German doping system “was unmistakable.”
Doping in West Germany became evident as soon as it
was formed in 1949, the study said. It described soccer players taking
stimulants known as “fighter pilot chocolate” that had been used by the military
during World War II.
This was an apparent reference to a methamphetamine
called Pervitin. The study said Pervitin was given to players as Germany won the
1954 World Cup. And it included a letter from a FIFA medical official saying
that traces of the stimulant ephedrine had been found in three unnamed West
German players as the team finished second at the 1966 World Cup.
Werner Franke, a molecular biologist from western
Germany who with his wife uncovered documents exposing the state-sponsored East
German system, said that West Germany escalated its own doping program out of
competitive ego, including sibling rivalry.
West Germany hosted the 1972 Munich Olympics, but won
40 medals compared to 66 for East Germany. At the 1976 Montreal Games, the gap
widened to 90 for East Germany and 39 for West Germany.
“They wanted medals, very simply,” Franke said in a
telephone interview. “The government likes it when Germans are successful.”
The release of the study has prompted calls in Germany
for a national antidoping law with teeth. Thomas Bach, the head of the German
Olympic Committee who is seeking to become the next president of the
International Olympic Committee, said that Germany remained determined to gain
full knowledge of its doping past and to learn lessons for the future.
“This will strengthen our zero tolerance policy
against doping,” Bach said in a statement.
But the West German study was published days after an
anguished Australian study conducted at the University of Adelaide. That study
said the only way to catch everyone who dopes is to test each athlete in the
world 50 times a year at a prohibitive cost.
“It appears that antidoping policies are in place more
for perception, to show that the right thing is being done,” the study’s
co-author, Maciej Henneberg, said in a statement. In practice, “the antidoping
system is doomed to fail.”
Doug Logan, a former chief executive of USA Track
& Field, has advocated surrendering what he called an unwinnable fight
against performance-enhancing drugs. “Let’s stop making a morality play out of
the issue,” Logan wrote on Speedendurance.com.
That is not a position, however, taken by many who
hold power in world sports. Short of allowing doping, what should be done, given
that that many of the world’s elite athletes clearly see little incentive to
stop using banned substances?
The answer is another question, said John Hoberman, a
University of Texas professor and an expert on doping. That question is: What is
sport for? Is it for perpetuating the current celebrity and entertainment
culture? Or is it for making victory less important than the good of sport?
If the answer is the latter, maybe it is possible to
begin changing the culture slowly, Hoberman said, as cycling seems to be doing
after imploding over doping.
“That, these days, is asking a very great deal,”
Hoberman said. “But if you don’t ask a very great deal, you are not going to get
a very great deal. What you are going to get is more scandal.”
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