Record of Drug Use Continues to Muddy East German Waters

The rapidly decomposing legend of East German swimming continues to produce a stench that may never go away.

During the last week, a criminal investigation into drug use in East German sports prompted or resulted in:

* Four former East German swimming coaches being formally charged with causing bodily harm for feeding anabolic steroids to 17 teenage female swimmers between 1974 and 1989.

* Two of those coaches, Dieter Lindemann and Volker Frischke,

being fired from their current positions with the German Swimming Federation for failing to adequately explain such charges.

* Two former world swimming champions admitting they had taken performance-enhancing drugs while competing for East Germany in the 1980s.

Joerg Hoffman, who won the 400- and 1,500-meter freestyle world championships while swimming for newly unified Germany in 1991, said in an interview with German radio Sender Freies Berlin that he began taking the banned anabolic steroid Oral-Turinabol, against his will, in 1988.

“I was first confronted by the blue pills in 1988,” said Hoffman, who claimed he had no choice to refuse because, “There was always a political officer standing by. If I had been the only one in the team to say, ‘I’m not taking this,’ they would have thrown me out.”

Karen Koenig, who helped set a world record with the East German 400-meter freestyle relay team in 1984, told the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung she took performance-enhancing drugs daily during training.

“They were presented to us as vitamin pills and I believed it because it sounded so normal,” Koenig said. “It was a ritual activity, like brushing your teeth. Every day I took pills of some sort.”

Such suspicions cast a pall over every world record and gold medal the East Germans racked up during their years of dominance in the pool, but drug tests rarely yielded tangible evidence to support the innuendo.

Since German unification, however, the opening of once-secret East German government files has produced evidence of supervised doping of East German athletes, many of them minors, which prompted the current investigation.

The charges are as frightening as they are ugly.

According to prosecutors, steroids were given to athletes without their knowledge or consent, with little or no concern for the long-term side effects. Among such effects: kidney and liver disease, deeper voice, excessive body hair and reproductive problems in women, the development of female-like breasts in men.

Lindemann, former coach of 1992 Olympic medalist Franziska van Almsick, faces four counts of causing bodily harm and Frischke, coach of European champion Kerstin Kielgass, faces eight.

Also charged are Rolf Glaeser and Dieter Krause. If convicted, each of the coaches could face up to three years in prison.

LOOKING FOR A RECOUNT

Fallout from the East German drug investigation has been global.

En route to his 1,500-meter freestyle world championship in 1991, Hoffman narrowly defeated Australia’s Kieren Perkins. Although Hoffman claims he took Oral-Turinabol for only three weeks in 1988 and refused the drug thereafter, Perkins’ coach, Don Talbot, was livid when he learned of Hoffman’s drug-use admission.

“I can’t tell you how mad it makes me,” Talbot, Australia’s coach, said at last week’s Australian trials for the world championships.

“It annoys the hell out of me that a guy who took a world championship off Kieren can now blithely admit that he used performance-enhancing drugs. It makes me wonder how many others there are.”

Saying he believes doping is still widespread in his sport, Talbot called on international swimming’s governing body, FINA, to begin publicly releasing drug-test results.

“I believe great efforts are made to cover up positive tests,” Talbot said. “It’s like the ostrich putting its head in the sand, as far as our leaders in the sport are concerned. They don’t want to do anything. While I don’t have proof, that’s my gut feeling. . . .

“It may well be that the people who are cheating are ahead of what FINA is testing for. But the very fact that FINA won’t publish things . . . makes you suspicious that something is wrong and they won’t release the results because something is being covered up.”

THE LONGEST WEEK (CONT.)

While East Germany’s dirty swimming laundry was being aired for world inspection, one of the former country’s proudest, longest-standing swimming records was finally eclipsed by China’s Chen Yan.

Petra Schneider’s world record of 4:36.10 in the women’s 400-meter individual medley had been on the books since August 1982--at 15 years 2 months, one of the oldest records in the sport. Chen broke the mark Monday in Shanghai with a time of 4:34.79 at the Chinese National Games.

Footnote: Chen’s world record was the first for China in a 50-meter pool since the Chinese drug scandal of 1994, when seven female swimmers--four of them world champions--failed doping tests at the Asian Games in Hiroshima.

WANTED (STILL): A TITLE SPONSOR

The Los Angeles indoor track meet formerly known as the Sunkist Invitational--on hiatus since Sunkist pulled its financial backing after 1996--continues its search for a new title sponsor as promoters Al Franken and son Don try to revive the event for 1998.

A date, Feb. 7, and a site, the Sports Arena, for the 1998 meet are set, but those plans are dependent on the Frankens completing a variety of sponsorship deals by the end of the month.

“We’re hoping to have a decision, if we have enough funding to go forward with the meet, by Halloween,” says Don Franken, who characterized the chances of holding the 1998 meet as 60-40.

Al Franken, who helped found the event in 1960, said, “We’re getting close. I think we have a reasonable shot of making a commitment within a couple of weeks.

“There are two ways to do it. One is to have a world-class meet like we had in the past. The other is to hold the meet with a lot of high school and college events if we don’t have the money to bring in the world-class athletes.

“Michael Johnson gets $40,000 or $50,000 a shot. We can’t afford too many Michael Johnsons. But maybe we can afford a Marion Jones and a Maurice Greene.”

WORLDSHORTS

The 1997-98 international figure skating season opens Thursday at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit with the Thrifty Car Rental Skate America International ’97.

Competitors include 1997 world champion Tara Lipinski and 1996 world champions Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldredge. The event will be televised nationally on ABC on Nov. 9 and 16

One day later, the 1997-98 World Cup ski season opens near Tignes, France--minus reigning women’s World Cup champion Pernilla Wiberg of Sweden.

Wiberg will miss the circuit’s first six weeks after tearing a knee ligament last Sunday during training. A two-time Olympic champion, Wiberg won the overall and slalom World Cup titles last season.

Country Club Olympics? First golf and now polo have applied for inclusion as Olympic sports. Glen Holden, president of the Federation of International Polo, said Friday that the International Olympic Committee would examine the possibility of adding polo as an Olympic sport at the 2000 Syndey Games.

Polo last appeared as an Olympic sport in 1936 at the Berlin Games.