Synthetic Medals

Joseph Tudor

Description

In the early 1970s, the athletes of the German Democratic Republic started to achieve incredible sports results, winning medals and setting new world records with astonishing frequency. For many years, their sporting supremacy was hailed as a triumph of the socialist government's commitment to scientific research and innovative training methods. But after the Cold War ended, the Stasi archives revealed a sinister secret behind the successes: a perverse doping system imposed by the government itself. Drugs were administered to young athletes, often without their consent, and the price their bodies are now paying is very high, both physically and mentally. Through the athletes' personal stories, Synthetic Medals reveals the events that led to the discovery of the state-doping system and the subsequent trial. It also explores the state's motives for this crime against its own people - people who were sacrificed on the altar of a distorted ideology, for the simple purpose of achieving glory on the international chessboard.

Sujets

• East Germany
• DDR

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801502870
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Joseph Tudor, 2022
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eBook ISBN 9781801502870
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
List of Acronyms
1. Die Wende: Before and After the Wall
2. Staatsplanthema 14.25
3. The Factory of Champions
4. Dopingprozess: Act I
5. Dopingprozess: Act II
6. The Many Sides of a Medal
7. Brot Und Spiele: Evolution of the GDR
8. Merits and Hypocrisies
9. Helping the Victims
Addendum: The Faded Heroes
Appendix I: Dr Riedel s List
Appendix II: Steroids for women
Appendix III: Course of Study at DHfK, Leipzig
Appendix IV: One Last Thought
Photos

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FIRST AND foremost, I would like to express my thanks to Dr Steven Ungerleider , psychologist and member of the International Paralympic Committee, for his generous access to his bestselling book Faust s Gold (St Martin s Press) and subsequent film Doping for Gold (BBC/PBS) and additional archival materials on the East German doping protocols.
The production of this book has been possible thanks to the support of some amazing people that have contributed to its final form with their professional input.
Josie , my wonderful other half, whose medical and linguistic knowledge has been of the utmost importance for me to fully understand certain physiological mechanisms of the human body and some German expressions. Her childhood spent in Hamburg has proven to be very useful.
Martin , my son, for his help, encouragement and support.
Silke McNair-Wilson , teacher of German and friend, for helping me translate some complex sentences.
Brenda Ellis , guiding light, for her precious advice regarding the nuances of the English language.
John Paul Kleiner , for granting me access to some very relevant information and pictures from his outstanding website, GDR Objectified, a really fine source of all sorts of materials related to the history of East Germany.
Honourable mentions also go to Renata Bertola , with whom I often share my writing experience, and Claudio Secco and Davide Angelini for their special support.
Special thanks go to:
Dr Daniela Richter , psychology consultant to the LAMV centre in Schwerin (Germany), for her patience in explaining in great detail her incredible job with former GDR athletes in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Dr Sigurd Hanke , chief surgeon at the Delitzsch and Eilenburg clinics (Leipzig), former SC Turbine Erfurt and GDR swimmer, for sharing his life experience as an athlete and as an East German citizen, and for his precious comments and advice.
Last, but not least, all my thanks go to Dr Ines Geipel , former SC Motor Jena and GDR sprinter, for her kindness in answering some questions and for showing me the work of her organisation, Doping-Opfer-Hilfe.
INTRODUCTION
THE AIM of this book is to provide all sports fans and contemporary history buffs with a solid and up-to-date reference on one of the most controversial phenomena of the 20th century: state-sponsored doping in East Germany during the Cold War years.
News reports often tell stories of drug scandals which cast a long shadow over the moral integrity of sportsmen and sportswomen. Too often we have seen sprinters, cyclists, swimmers, and competitors of all sorts, trying to cut corners and reach for glory with the help of specialist centres able to supply the athletes with wondrous pharmaceutical supports. Such shortcuts have proven to be both illegal and dangerous.
In the case of the East German athletes, however, there was a major difference: the state itself was the architect of a complex system of secret research, experimentation and distribution of drugs which were surreptitiously administered to the competitors. Most athletes, especially the youngest, didn t have a choice; they got caught, sadly, in a sort of chemical whirlwind of amazing tablets and injections that made them run faster, jump longer and recover from fatigue more effectively, and, in some cases, made them live a shorter life.
The gossip about the doped East German superhumans, and especially about those masculine women, who managed to push a small European country to the top of the medal tables in a variety of sports events, had been circulating for years. It was a topic of discussion among pundits and commentators of all nations. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent collapse of the German Democratic Republic, the truth came out: the East Germans won so much because they cheated. News of confessions and investigations reached the rest of the world, but most of the information and historical analysis about this incredible state-sponsored doping case has remained restricted to the German media.
In English, there are only two relevant works on the topic: one popular , the ground-breaking Steven Ungerleider s Faust s Gold (St Martin s Press, 2013), and the other academic , the excellent Mike Dennis and Jonathan Grix s Sport Under Communism - Behind the East German Miracle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The book you are holding is the third; its aim is to tell the story without neglecting a little historical analysis.
Although some of the information you are about to read relies necessarily on the two works above, the vast majority of the material presented here is based on recent information collected through interviews that various athletes and other protagonists have given, mainly to the German press; I have had the chance to personally talk to some of them. This is therefore a book that aims to bring together the most up-to-date revelations, sorting them into themes, in order to provide a better understanding of the state-sponsored doping phenomenon. There are so many personal stories that deserve to be told; I thought it was only right to make them available to a wider public.
Furthermore, I have attempted to analyse the rise of the GDR in the context of the post-Second World War years and the Cold War period, and try to evaluate the reasons that piloted its political leaders in developing and implementing the notorious plan that sold the soul of its children to the devil.
The story narrated in this book can be seen as a thriller, complete with victims, spies, conspirators, shadowy characters and heroes, races against time and plot twists. It s a long story that tells of fake and real victories, of pain and atonement. The story even bears a supernatural element: a demonic pact between the East German government and an evil entity disguised in white lab coats. I will also explore the consequences of that deal, generated by the distorted achievements of modern chemistry, the real Philosopher s Stone of the 20th century, able to change the ambitions of an unscrupulous state leadership into gold.
In the first three chapters we ll explore the circumstances that enabled the investigators to discover the state-sponsored doping system, and how political leaders and scientists created it. We ll try to analyse the historical reasons that pushed the GDR government to develop a very well organised network which was perfectly integrated within an extraordinary scheme of recruitment and training of athletes.
In chapters four and five we ll have a look at the Dopingprozess , the trial that showed the world the state-sponsored doping system thanks to the confessions of athletes, managers and political leaders. Here, we can read the harsh testimonies of several protagonists of the East German regime, which will help us to understand the reasons for their decisions and the relative consequences on the athletes lives.
In chapters six, seven and eight, different aspects related to drug use in sport will be examined, including a glance into the difficult lives of the former athletes and how they have been coping with their health after the end of their career, and the hypocrisy that often surrounds the world of sport. Also, some brief analysis of the political, social and economic background of the years 1945-89 will help us understand the development of the pharmaceutical connection in that period.
Finally, in the last chapter, we delve into the means of social support, both financial and moral, that the newly united Germany decided to offer to the victims of the GDR state-sponsored doping programme.
The path through the pages of this book will not be easy: it is a disturbing journey into a tainted aspect of the human soul. The main intention is to inform the readers, while trying to instil in them the curiosity to explore more about a topic which certainly deserved a greater degree of attention from the media.
Joseph Tudor
LIST OF ACRONYMS
ASK Armeesportklub (Military Sports Club)
BA Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive)
BFC Berliner Fussballclub Dynamo (Dynamo Berlin FC)
BStU Bundesbeauftragte f r die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Federal Commissioner for the Records of the Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic)
DDR Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (GDR, German Democratic Republ