Defectors Expose E. German Doping : Two Former Sports Officials Describe Methodical Administration of Drugs

Two East Germans who were prominent in international sports before they defected to the West have provided accounts of life as athletes on the other side of the wall.

For those who have suspected East Germany of creating Wunderkinder through manipulation, intimidation and chemicals, the resulting picture was as grotesque as they could possibly have imagined.

Even for those who want to believe that East German officials are no different than those in the rest of the world--basically well-intentioned sportsmen who are battling long odds and expert pharmacists to identify and eliminate drug users--the allegations by Hans-Georg Aschenbach and Hans-Juergen Noczenski must give pause.

They have impeccable credentials. Aschenbach, 38, is a four-time world champion ski jumper and a gold-medal winner from the 70-meter tower in the 1976 Winter Olympics. Noczenski, former chairman of the East German judo federation, is the highest-ranking sports official from that country ever to defect. Aschenbach defected last August, Noczenski in February.

They told their stories in an eight-part series that began June 25 in a West German Sunday newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, continued in the daily Bild and ended July 2 in Bild am Sonntag.

Such West German tabloids use screaming headlines, numerous pictures, colorful writing and often titillating stories to please the massive audience that has made them influential.

They are also staunchly anti-Communist and unflagging in their pursuit of unflattering stories about life in East Germany. Judging from their prominent play on the front page and the sports pages, the interviews with Aschenbach and Noczenski were major coups for the newspapers.

“Olympic Champion Divulges Biggest Sports Scandal; All East German Stars Doped; Also Katarina Witt,” headlined Bild am Sonntag on the first day of the series.

Bild am Sonntag said Aschenbach has “carried next to his heart a bomb. Now it has exploded.” The newspaper later claimed that it had “ripped the mask from the face of East German sports,” revealing what Bild called “a swamp of lies and cheating.”

But the West German newspapers were not alone in trumpeting the series.

“The sports sensation of the year,” the London Daily Mail called it.

Behind the East German mask, Bild said, is a Draconian system that was designed in the ‘60s by Manfred Ewald, who recently resigned as president of the country’s central sports organization, the DTSB, and approved by former East German leader Walter Ulbricht.

Aschenbach’s charges, which were supported by Noczenski, were that all East German athletes are force-fed performance-enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids, beginning as early as age 13 in some sports, including figure skating, gymnastics and swimming.

Aschenbach is particularly qualified to address that subject because he became a doctor upon retiring as an athlete and was assigned to one of the sports schools for athletes with world-class potential.

Aschenbach said the young athletes initially are told that the drugs are vitamins. Those who balk when they eventually learn the truth, he said, no longer are allowed to compete internationally, lose membership in their sports clubs and are harassed in their private lives.

The allegations were not confined to drugs. Aschenbach said there are tremendous financial rewards for Olympic medalists. Bild reported that swimmer Kristin Otto, who won six gold medals at the 1988 Summer Olympics, received more than $130,000 from the government (about one-fifth of that in coveted Western currency), a Peugeot, a cruise with her boyfriend to Tunisia and Cyprus, a $5,000 clothing allowance and $2,000 for her trust fund so that she could retain her amateur status.

But Aschenbach said that athletes also pay a high price. For every gold medalist, he estimated there are 350 invalids who have been victimized by the intensive training regimen that begins at age 13 or 14 in most sports.

He also said that athletes are closely watched by the state police, who monitor their telephone calls and mail and maintain files regarding their personal lives.

Aschenbach was suspect, he said, because he dyed his hair blond and wore a rhinestone stud in an ear. A lieutenant colonel in the army, he said that he went years without an increase in pay or rank because his superiors thought he displayed bourgeois tendencies.

“I cannot listen to lies about East German sports anymore,” he said. “People here and everywhere have a right to know what’s really happening over there.”

The East Germans had their own version of what really happened in Aschenbach’s case.

Volker Kluge, the East German sports journalist through whom the DTSB often speaks, wrote that Aschenbach defected because he was under investigation for “medical manipulation” in connection with his role as the national ski jumping team’s medical officer since March of 1988.

Reuters quoted East German sources who said Aschenbach was caught administering drugs, probably steroids, to eight ski jumpers early last year.

But the sources also told Reuters that the articles in Bild and Bild am Sonntag had forced the DTSB to acknowledge for the first time that there is a drug problem among East German athletes.

“We have had cases of doping in (East Germany), cases where people wanted to get an advantage,” one source said. “We have tried, however, to solve these problems internally. It may have been a mistake not to publicize these cases.”

That is consistent with the East Germans’ request last November to join the proposed drug-testing agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Under that proposal, U.S. doctors would verify testing of Soviet athletes and vice versa.

Soviet and U.S. officials said earlier this year at a news conference that East Germany and other countries eventually will be included, but not until the initial agreement is in effect.

Baaron Pittenger, U.S. Olympic Committee executive director, said the Bild and Bild am Sonntag series should make the USOC and the Soviets even more determined to see that the East Germans become involved.

“(The articles) confirm the feeling that performance-enhancing drugs are a major problem of international sports,” he said. “That doesn’t speak to the accuracy of the stories. I don’t want to make any judgments at all about the East Germans. But you have to have some kind of system where there is accurate, verifiable drug testing, and that is what we are in the process of developing with the Soviets.”

Since the series was published, two other former East German athletes, both defectors to the West, have made similar allegations to newspapers, one in West Germany and one in Austria.

Christine Knacke, who in 1977 became the first woman to swim the 100-meter butterfly in less than one minute, told a newspaper in Vienna, where she now lives, that drugs, including steroids, were forced upon her by East German sports officials and destroyed her health. She also blamed the physical problems of her daughter, who was born in 1983, on the drugs.

“Naturally, there is doping in East Germany, just as there is in the West,” she told Kronen Zeitung. “But here (in the West), you have a chance to protect yourself against it.”

Aschenbach told Bild am Sonntag that winning the gold medal at Innsbruck in 1976 was his greatest moment in sports, quickly followed by his most anxious.

“Those were the worst hours of my life,” he said. “I had won at the Olympic Winter Games on the small tower. Then the doping control. My God, what I went through. Will they catch you? Or was the timing correct once again? Was everything for nothing? Will you be the one they place the blame on, the idiot that is the butt of laughter for everybody?

“Nobody can imagine what you go through. You even forget that you have won.”

But only one East German athlete, a female shotputter, has ever been suspended because of a positive test for a banned substance at an international competition.

Noczenski described the precautions taken by the East Germans.

“Every athlete gets off the drugs before the competition,” he said. “Before he leaves the country, cars drive criss-cross through the country to collect urine samples. They are taken to the doping lab. Only he who is clean competes. He who isn’t acts as if he is injured.”