# State Sponsored Doping



## DrSmile (Jul 22, 2006)

I believe the story coming out of Germany to be a ground breaker - there is clear and substantiated evidence that West Germany had a state sponsored doping program at least dating to the 1970s. Doctors administered various anabolic steroids AND EPO to Olympic athletes. The program was funded by the West German Department of the Interior and administered by the German Olympic Sports Confederation. Currently the names of individuals involved are being withheld by the government.

The Spiegel story (sorry they don't have the English page up yet):

Streit über Veröffentlichung der Studie Doping in Deutschland - SPIEGEL ONLINE

This is pretty significant because West Germany would have been very unlikely to follow through on such a program without approval, direction and instruction by the United States. It would seem very likely that such a program was based on a similar and likely more extensive program "elsewhere."


----------



## Retro Grouch (Apr 30, 2002)

DrSmile said:


> This is pretty significant because West Germany would have been very unlikely to follow through on such a program without approval, direction and instruction by the United States. It would seem very likely that such a program was based on a similar and likely more extensive program "elsewhere."


I'm not sure the US had any influence in West Germany's doping program. What's there to be gained? 

With a organization as corrupt as the IOC, and with so much on the line, in terms of international pride, politics, money and athlete egos, it would be hard to believe that any country with the means would not have dabbled in some level of state sponsored organized doping.


----------



## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

Foreign Countries Dope
It's the U.S.'s Fault!


----------



## Salsa_Lover (Jul 6, 2008)

Wasn't it EAST Germany ?


----------



## DrSmile (Jul 22, 2006)

West Germany was pretty close to a US puppet government (well maybe Liberia was worse...), and I find it highly improbable that this wasn't done with full knowledge by the US. It's very likely that these methods were orchestrated as a reaction to East German doping successes, and it would have been a "Western" counter-reaction made under US guidance. To me as a German it seems like the only reasonable explanation.


----------



## bruin11 (May 21, 2004)

State sponsored doping. Doping For Gold

Doping for Gold - Watch the Full Episode | Secrets of the Dead | PBS


----------



## DrSmile (Jul 22, 2006)

I'm not sure how this isn't registering... this is WEST Germany, not EAST. There is a HUGE difference.


----------



## viciouscycle (Aug 22, 2009)

And this is news? That doping was occurring in Germany in the 70's?


----------



## DrSmile (Jul 22, 2006)

I forgot about the total lack of knowledge Americans have regarding Europe... when Der Spiegel traces this back to the US I will post again. They are a legitimate news organization that doesn't give up very easily.


----------



## Doctor Falsetti (Sep 24, 2010)

DrSmile said:


> I forgot about the total lack of knowledge Americans have regarding Europe... when Der Spiegel traces this back to the US I will post again. They are a legitimate news organization that doesn't give up very easily.


 I don't mean to be rude but to call West Germany in the 70's a puppet government of the U.S. and think the US government had something to do with West German's doping is absurd.


----------



## Slartibartfast (Jul 22, 2007)

Dr Smile, thanks for posting. I wish I could read German. I could make out enough of the article to see that there is/was a serious investigation into systematic doping in WEST Germany, from the 50s to the present (?) Not sure when the present is. 2006? 

However, I can't see why you're necessarily linking West German doping to the U.S. While it might be plausible, it doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion to me. To me the most important revelation is that here is yet another case of state-sponsored doping.

In another thread I threw down my theory that Team Sky and British Olympic cycling are the products of such a program, and was laughed off the forum. Haw-haw-haw, the Queen is sponsoring dopers! Dude, I wish I was on whatever you're taking, bwahahaha!

What I can't understand is why this is viewed as far-fetched. Having state sponsorship is by far the most reliable, secure path to success! East Germany and the Soviet Union definitely did this. The '84 U.S. Olympic cycling team doped and admitted it (they admitted the legal part). There are suspicions that China has a systematic doping program. Now West German revelations. Again, why not the Brits?


----------



## wim (Feb 28, 2005)

Doctor Falsetti said:


> [to] think the US government had something to do with West German's doping is absurd.


It is indeed.


----------



## love4himies (Jun 12, 2012)

Doctor Falsetti said:


> I don't mean to be rude but to call West Germany in the 70's a puppet government of the U.S. and think the US government had something to do with West German's doping is absurd.


I have to agree.


----------



## asgelle (Apr 21, 2003)

Slartibartfast said:


> East Germany and the Soviet Union definitely did this. The '84 U.S. Olympic cycling team doped and admitted it (they admitted the legal part).


It's logic like this that gets you laughed away. How do you jump from the facts of the '84 blood boosting to U.S. state sponsored doping?


----------



## Slartibartfast (Jul 22, 2007)

asgelle said:


> It's logic like this that gets you laughed away. How do you jump from the facts of the '84 blood boosting to U.S. state sponsored doping?


Good point, in the case of the USOC... Organized, systematic doping by the Olympic team, it's coaches, and trainers is not the same as "state-sponsorship," since the USOC isn't actually funded by the federal government. Condoning of doping by a federally chartered organization is pretty close, though. "State-allowed" might be a better term...


----------



## Doctor Falsetti (Sep 24, 2010)

Slartibartfast said:


> Good point, in the case of the USOC... Organized, systematic doping by the Olympic team, it's coaches, and trainers is not the same as "state-sponsorship," since the USOC isn't actually funded by the federal government. Condoning of doping by a federally chartered organization is pretty close, though. "State-allowed" might be a better term...


State-Allowed would be a good term. The focus became more about covering up the issued then enabling it. 

Ed Burke, the guy who brought up the idea of blood doping in 84, stayed on staff for well over a decade after the 84 games


----------



## Slartibartfast (Jul 22, 2007)

Doctor Falsetti said:


> State-Allowed would be a good term. The focus became more about covering up the issued then enabling it.


So in the U.S. it was state-allowed; in the USSR and East Germany it was state-sponsored. Maybe the same in West Germany, as evidenced in the OP's article. There are several allegations of "officially sanctioned" PED use by Chinese athletes, from the 80s onward.

The British are at least as clever as the Americans, Russians, Germans, and Chinese -- and possibly sneakier. :thumbsup:

So why not the Brits?


----------



## Doctor Falsetti (Sep 24, 2010)

Slartibartfast said:


> So in the U.S. it was state-allowed; in the USSR and East Germany it was state-sponsored. Maybe the same in West Germany, as evidenced in the OP's article. There are several allegations of "officially sanctioned" PED use by Chinese athletes, from the 80s onward.
> 
> The British are at least as clever as the Americans, Russians, Germans, and Chinese -- and possibly sneakier. :thumbsup:
> 
> So why not the Brits?


The big difference is WADA. During the 80's and 90's many Feds, including the US, looked the other way when it came to positives tests. With WADA this is much harder to do. It is certainly possible British riders are doping but I would be shocked if it was financed or organized by British Cycling


----------



## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

asgelle said:


> It's logic like this that gets you laughed away. How do you jump from the facts of the '84 blood boosting to U.S. state sponsored doping?


yes the blood doping by the US Cycling team all goes back to Eddie B not some Govt program. And it wasn't illegal when they did it.


----------



## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

Doctor Falsetti said:


> The big difference is WADA. During the 80's and 90's many Feds, including the US, looked the other way when it came to positives tests. With WADA this is much harder to do. It is certainly possible British riders are doping but I would be shocked if it was financed or organized by British Cycling


certain female sprinters who changed their P-Rs by close to a second...
and died very young


----------



## Slartibartfast (Jul 22, 2007)

Doctor Falsetti said:


> It is certainly possible British riders are doping but I would be shocked if it was financed or organized by British Cycling


Or tacitly condoned? Okay, I'll give up for now, until we see another outrageous result from Team Sky... :incazzato:


----------



## sir duke (Mar 24, 2006)

atpjunkie said:


> Foreign Countries Dope
> It's the U.S.'s Fault!


Cultural influence is a double-edged sword


----------



## paredown (Oct 18, 2006)

Doctor Falsetti said:


> I don't mean to be rude but to call West Germany in the 70's a puppet government of the U.S. and think the US government had something to do with West German's doping is absurd.


OMG--I'm actually agreeing with you for once...


----------



## paredown (Oct 18, 2006)

The West German report got a brief mention in the NYTimes on Sunday and again Tuesday talking about soccer

The East German programs have been discussed for years--hardly newsworthy now. In fact, this is the lead of the article posted:



> In Germany, for decades public debate regarding the topic of the use of performance-enhancing drugs was limited to the GDR. [It was] organized and supervised by the highest authority of the socialist state. Doping in the Federal Republic? It has long been the assumption that there were at most some cases. This is a mistake.


[sorry for the crude translation]


----------



## Creakyknees (Sep 21, 2003)

ok but well everybody else was doping too


----------



## 55x11 (Apr 24, 2006)

atpjunkie said:


> yes the blood doping by the US Cycling team all goes back to Eddie B not some Govt program. And it wasn't illegal when they did it.


ditto. I always found it curious how many people find it "natural" that east germans like Zabel or Ulrich must have been doping only because they were East German (so was Jens Voigt, btw). You really didn't need a state sponsored doping program to get to the doping. Festina wasn't a state sponsored program, and neither was US Postal. Ok, so US Postal was US sponsored, but you get my point.

Just because someone was born in East Germany or Kazakhstan doesn't make them more morally corrupt than someone from Plano, Texas or Marblehead, Massachusetts. Or even a mennonite from Pennsylvania.
Spaniards, Italians, French, Dutch, Belgians, they all doped.

West Germany, East Germany, United States or France, all equally dirty. This doping stuff, like true love, crosses all kinds of boundaries, geographic, historic and otherwise.


----------



## paredown (Oct 18, 2006)

55x11 said:


> West Germany, East Germany, United States or France, all equally dirty. This doping stuff, like true love, crosses all kinds of boundaries, geographic, historic and otherwise.


The trouble with the moral equivalence argument is that the DDR was a special case--not only was the doping pervasive and systematic, it was state-run and the PEDs were often given to the athletes without their knowledge. While other countries may have had individuals who chose to use PEDs or programs like transfusions (when they were still legal), to the best of my knowledge no other country (except perhaps China today) has run doping programs for athletes as young as 10 years old, often without the knowledge of the participants. From the Wiki article:



> Often, doping was carried out without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse,[10] one of them is Rica Reinisch, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts.


Or see this abstract of an article in Clinical Chemistry:



> Several classified documents saved after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1990 describe the promotion by the government of the use of drugs, notably androgenic steroids, in high-performance sports (doping). Top-secret doctoral theses, scientific reports, progress reports of grants, proceedings from symposia of experts, and reports of physicians and scientists who served as unofficial collaborators for the Ministry for State Security (“Stasi”) reveal that from 1966 on, hundreds of physicians and scientists, including top-ranking professors, performed doping research and administered prescription drugs as well as unapproved experimental drug preparations. Several thousand athletes were treated with androgens every year, including minors of each sex. Special emphasis was placed on administering androgens to women and adolescent girls because this practice proved to be particularly effective for sports performance. Damaging side effects were recorded, some of which required surgical or medical intervention. In addition, several prominent scientists and sports physicians of the GDR contributed to the development of methods of drug administration that would evade detection by international doping controls.


This is in a whole other category from a group of cyclists choosing to use PEDs with the support of their team.

The shock for the former West Germans is that they have always thought of themselves as the 'white hats'--and now they are facing revelations that there were state supported doping programs in West Germany too.

I remember watching the World Field Hockey championships in the late '70s--with Canada playing the DDR. The players on their team were barely female and frankly, pretty scary looking...


----------



## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

sir duke said:


> Cultural influence is a double-edged sword


gotta take the good with the bad


----------



## terzo rene (Mar 23, 2002)

paredown said:


> The trouble with the moral equivalence argument is that the DDR was a special case--not only was the doping pervasive and systematic, it was state-run and the PEDs were often given to the athletes without their knowledge.


 The names escape me but there was at least one court case in the US that showed doping without the athlete's knowledge in the US as well. People are people all over the world - scum, every last one of them. Just takes being in the right situation to bring it out.


----------



## Doctor Falsetti (Sep 24, 2010)

terzo rene said:


> The names escape me but there was at least one court case in the US that showed doping without the athlete's knowledge in the US as well. People are people all over the world - scum, every last one of them. Just takes being in the right situation to bring it out.


Strock Speaks - VeloNews.com

Greg Strock was doped by René Wenzel and Chris Charmichel. He, Erick Keiter, Ernie Lachuga, and Lance all got sick. Erick and Greg sued and won. They settled with Charmichel.


----------

