WORLD SPORTS SCENE : German Steroid Scandal Unfolds Rapidly

Suspicions that East Germany emerged in the 1970s as a world sports superpower with chemical help have been confirmed through a story Monday in a Berlin newspaper by swimmer Raik Hannemann and through reports by Germany’s Stern magazine last week.

“We all took them (anabolic steroids),” wrote Hannemann, a silver medalist in the 200-meter medley at the 1989 European Championships, in a new publication, Berliner Kurier am Abend. “I admit that I experimented with several drugs, because I was after privileges, such as an apartment, a place in a university and a car.”

East Germany’s former communist government rewarded successful athletes such privileges.

Hannemann said he first took turinabol, an anabolic steroid, in 1985, at the urging of his club coach.

Hannemann’s revelation, and that to be published this week in Der Spiegel that former West German athletes also used steroids, come in the wake of a story by Germany’s Stern magazine, which published a report based on confidential documents that it bought from the former East Germany doping control laboratory in Kreischa.

Stern reported that it paid a substantial sum “before they were shredded like most incriminating documents.”

According to Stern, the documents reveal that every major East German athlete for the last 20 years, except figure skater Katarina Witt and ski-jumper Jens Weisflogg, was a systematic user of oral turinabol, which was given under strict medical supervision.

Several East German athletes, including swimmer Kristin Otto, long jumper-sprinter Heike Drechsler and shotputter Ulf Timmerman, denied the report, but Stern said the documents were verified by Dr. Manfred Hoppner, who was vice-chairman of East Germany’s sports-medicine services.

“Athletes were not forced to take drugs, but they were given full details of what were commonly called in (East Germany) ‘support products,’ ” he told Stern.

When contacted by a Dresden newspaper, Die Union, Dr. Claus Clausnitzer, the head of the laboratory in Kreischa, said, “It is quite clear that drugs were used as a matter of course (by East German athletes).”

The documents are “proof of what we all believed for decades,” Stern concluded. “Compared to the East Germans’ exploits, the scandal surrounding Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics was a farce.”

Also, the Reuters news agency, said Sunday that Der Spiegel will report this week that a West German coach, employing information he got from an East German colleague, supervised the drug use of four West German female athletes who competed in Seoul.

Der Spiegel named Helga Arendt, the 400-meter indoor world champion, and Silke Knoll, a member of West Germany’s 1,600-meter relay team as being among the users.

According to the magazine, Knoll took three tablets of stromba, an anabolic steroid, 19 days before the start of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Arendt, the magazine alleged, started taking muscle-building steroids in 1986.

Jochen Spilker resigned Monday as coach of western Germany’s 400-meter female runners after the Der Spiegel allegations accusing him of providing the steroids were made public.

“Regardless whether the allegations raised by Spiegel are tenable or not, I feel that the basis for my work has been removed,” Spilker said in a statement.

The German track and field federation, which has inherited the problems with the combination of East and West Germany, called an emergency session for Wednesday to discuss the allegations and has begun an investigation.

The first meeting since the 1988 Summer Olympics between Johnson and Carl Lewis might not be as interesting as the race between promoters to stage it.

Organizers for Expo ’92 in Seville, Spain, recently told The European, a London-based newspaper, that they are close to signing Lewis and Johnson for a $3-million 100-meter race for May 30.

But organizers of a meet in Malmo, Sweden, on Aug. 5 told Reuters last week that they will have the first race between the two since Johnson returned from a two-year suspension for failing his drug test in Seoul.

They said that their field also will include Lewis’ Santa Monica Track Club teammate Leroy Burrell, who has emerged in Johnson’s absence as the world’s No. 1 sprinter. No dollar figures were reported.

In a semiannual occurrence, soccer’s prima donna, Diego Maradona, has announced that he wants out of the Italian League. But he said last week that he is serious this time, even offering to pay the owner of his Naples team, Corrado Ferlaino, to let him out of a $2-million-a-year contract that does not expire until 1993.

Despite reports that he is discussing long-term $20-million offers in France and Japan, Maradona, 30, insisted that he wants to return to his native Argentina to finish his career.

“I am getting old now and am starting to have health problems,” he said in a weekly column that he writes for a Rome newspaper.

He further indicated that he is willing to force Ferlaino’s hand by failing to show for an Italian Cup game last Wednesday in Florence. The Naples general manager, Luciana Moggi, told the French press agency that Maradona’s agent called to say that his client was asleep and did not feel like traveling.

“All I know is that I’m utterly sick of Maradona, and the club will take the appropriate action,” Moggi said.

Franz Beckenbauer, who coached West Germany to the World Cup title, must be having second thoughts about turning down a full-time job with the U.S. Soccer Federation to become technical director of Olympique Marseille in France’s soccer league.

The team’s popular coach, Gerard Gili, quit in protest over Beckenbauer’s appointment and moved to Marseille’s archrival, Bordeaux. So Marseille’s fans hardly were in the mood for the ensuing loss to Cannes in the home opener and targeted Beckenbauer for their insults.

The team since has improved, moving into first place, but Beckenbauer was stunned recently when police escorted out three of Marseille’s players during a practice. They were wanted to discuss their roles in one of three unrelated financial scandals this year that have left French soccer reeling.

“This is not an ideal way to prepare for matches,” Beckenbauer said.

Notes

In three World Cup bobsled events this year, the U.S. two-man team of Edwin Moses and driver Brian Shimer has improved from eighth to fifth to third. They were third last Thursday in Winterberg, Germany, three-quarters of a second behind the sled driven by East Germany’s multiple Olympic and world champion, Wolfgang Hoppe. . . . In the first World Cup luge competition of the year, also in Germany, Cammy Myler of Lake Placid, N.Y., finished third. The No. 1 U.S. woman in luge, Bonny Warner of Mt. Baldy, is taking time off to train with United Airlines as a pilot.

Mexico, historically the most successful member of soccer’s Central and North American and Caribbean region, is seeking better competition by applying to enter next summer’s South American championships in Chile. But the South Americans say the Mexicans need approval in their own region, which does not appear to be forthcoming. . . . Mexico wants more international experience for its players, who were not allowed to compete in the 1990 World Cup because their federation was serving a two-year suspension for using over-age players in a junior tournament. Next to incur a similar penalty may be Costa Rica, which used an over-age player in the 1985 under-16 world championship.

Chile already has been barred from the 1994 World Cup for an incident last year during a game in Brazil. . . . With no interest from the major U.S. networks, the organizing committee for the 1994 World Cup in the United States awarded the rights to produce television coverage to the European Broadcasting Union. . . . Valeri Nepomniachi, who coached surprising Cameroon to the World Cup quarterfinals last summer, has returned to the Soviet Union and might be appointed national team manager.

Remember when Montreal’s former Mayor, Jean Drapeau, said, “The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby?” Fourteen years after the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the Canadian province of Quebec is still paying off the debt. After paying $850 million, officials said last week that they still owe another $170 million. Much of the money comes from a tax on tobacco and a special municipal tax in Montreal. . . . There might not be a joint Korean team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, after all. Officials from North and South Korea met last week and could not even decide which topic to discuss first. Nor could they decide on a date for the next meeting.