WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Freedom Too Habit-Forming for East Germans

When the Germans held their first swimming championships last month since re-unification, the East Germans, whose women, in particular, have dominated the sport, barely held their own with the West Germans. Speculation in the German media was that the East Germans were sunk without the drug programs that apparently were administered by the sports leadership in their country.

But West Germany’s Michael Gross, one of the world’s best swimmers over the past decade, has another explanation. He said the East Germans have acquired some bad habits since becoming citizens in a democracy.

“Some of the girls are smoking,” he said in a statement released last week by the organizers of swimming’s World Championships next month in Perth, Australia.

“They are eating junk food and are enjoying their freedom as German citizens. They would train two or three times a day (in the past) under the guidance of their coaches. Now, they can do what they like. They still have to learn to . . . discipline themselves.”

Gross said that the East Germans also have to learn to manage their time now that it is not managed for them by the state.

“Swimming was the biggest thing in their lives since they were four or five years old,” he said. “They were supported by their coaches, the government, so much so that you cannot imagine it.

“Now, it’s turned around 180 degrees. Swimming is a hobby. They are doing it by themselves. It is not as important for the (German) system as it was in East Germany. Therefore, they have to combine school and work and training.”

Smoking and eating junk food are bad enough. But one former East German swimmer has really descended into a life of disrepute. Raik Hanneman became a sportswriter.

After a German magazine, Stern, published an article detailing the systematic use of anabolic steroids and other banned performance-enhancing drugs by East German athletes, Hanneman wrote a series of articles last week further exposing the East German sports system for a Berlin newspaper, Kurier am Abend. His most sensational revelation concerned a nasal spray containing a steroid that was undetectable after three days.

Hanneman, 22, won a silver medal in the 200-meter medley at the 1989 European Championships before retiring into a life of journalism.

The son of a factory manager in Leipzig, he said in a recent interview with the Associated Press that he was discovered at age 6 when talent scouts from the sports administration visited his school. Five years later, he was placed in a special sports school, where he said that he studied for three hours a day and trained for six.

He said that there was a heavy emphasis in the schools on Communist ideology. But he said that most of the athletes were motivated by the privileges, such as cars and private apartments, that they would receive if they became champions.

For average citizens, “it would usually take 15 years to get a car, 18 years to get a new apartment,” Hanneman said.

On the opening day of its executive board meetings Sunday in Lillehammer, Norway, the International Olympic Committee appointed a five-member commission to meet with South African government and sports leaders in Johannesburg, South Africa, in April.

It will be the first time since the country was expelled from the Olympic movement in 1970 for its official policies of racial separation that the IOC has sent a delegation to South Africa.

Judge Keba Mbaye of Senegal, chairman of the IOC’s anti-apartheid commission and head of the delegation, said in an interview with a Norwegian newspaper that the visit could lead to South Africa’s re-instatement in time for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. But IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain has indicated that the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta might be a more realistic target.

AC Milan won soccer’s World Club Championship Sunday in Tokyo for the second consecutive year, beating Olimpia Asuncion of Paraguay, 3-0. AC forward Frank Rijkaard scored twice on headers.

Back home, AC’s cross-town rival, Inter Milan, extended its Italian League lead with a 5-1 victory over Cesena. Defending champion Naples dropped to 12th in the 18-team league after a scoreless tie with Atalanta. Diego Maradona was benched after missing two practices last week and might soon have his wish granted to leave Naples before his contract expires in 1993.

Notes

Because of recent revelations about drug use in both East and West Germany, the newly formed body that oversees sports in unified Germany is establishing a seven-member commission headed by a prominent judge to investigate. Edwin Moses, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s substance abuse committee, and former British miler Sebastian Coe have been asked to join. . . . Willi Daume, president of Germany’s Olympic Committee, said in an interview with a German newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, that the Germans might not enter sports at the 1992 Summer Olympics in which their athletes’ drug use is found to be heavy. He specifically mentioned swimming.

Kurt Thomas, attempting a gymnastics comeback at 34, withdrew from the Winter Nationals in Colorado Springs, Colo., because of a sprained ankle. He injured the ankle last month at the Wisconsin Open, which he was leading after the compulsories. He had to postpone his attempt to qualify for the U.S. team at next year’s World Championships until the national championships in May. . . . Betty Okino of Chicago won the uneven bars, tied for first on the balance beam and finished third in the floor exercise at an international gymnastics meet Sunday in Stuttgart, Germany. She is coached by Bela Karoly in Houston.