Swimming: Drugs trial casts shadow on world

In Berlin, former East Germans whose doping skills created a medal machine go on trial this week. Imre Karacs, in Bonn, says the repercussions will be felt far beyond the Federal Republic

THE spotlight is about to fall on the dark secrets of East Germany's phenomenal sporting achievements. Nearly a decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the first indictments are ready, and the vanguard of those who relied on drugs to enhance sporting achievement will go on trial in the fortress-like courthouse of Berlin's Moabit district.

Four swimming coaches and two doctors stand accused of inflicting grievous bodily harm on athletes, but this is only the beginning. A team of 60 special prosecutors has spent the past few years sifting through captured files of the Stasi secret police. Their list of suspects currently runs to 680 names.

They are the coaches, doctors, physios and club officials who had turned East Germany into the most prolific medal-winning machine in history. That those unbeatable heptathletes did not get their biceps just from the weight training was already obvious, but the investigation has revealed far more widespread and systematic doping than was ever suspected. At the latest count, some 2,000 athletes had at one time been on performance-enhancing drugs.

When the trials are over, record books may have to be erased. The prosecutors will try to protect the identities of the victims - the athletes who simply could not lose against their feeble Western opponents. But many will be found out, and their cheating - often unwitting - will reverberate around the world.

However shocking it may seem that the Communist regime had sent an army of doped-up beefcakes into battle against the decadent West, the real scandal is yet to emerge. For the cadre who stand accused of relying on drugs to make the GDR great were immediately hired by the former enemy, and have been minting gold for their new masters ever since. Most of the 680 remain in employment, in Germany and many other countries of the world.

The first batch, who go on trial tomorrow, had all worked for the swimming section of Dynamo Berlin, the Stasi's very own club. The most prominent of them, Dieter Lindemann, was coaching Franziska van Almsick until very recently. Rolf Glaser, another accused, was working as swimming coach in Austria when he was charged. Volker Rischke also remained in the coaching business in Germany. Only one of the four trainers accused of encouraging the use of drugs, Dieter Krause, has failed to find a job in sport.

The charge sheet names 17 athletes whose health was destroyed by the anabolic steroids they had been forced to take. One teenage girl grew a beard as a result of the "vitamin pills". Another developed a deep voice. The "side-effects" catalogued in the Stasi files include hormonal imbalance, loss of libido, damage to the liver and reproductive organs, mood changes and depression. The investigators have a list of 350 athletes who still suffer from the effects of the enforced medication, and four fatalities.

The Moabit court, which had been grappling with murderous border guards by the Wall and the politicians behind the trigger, has its work cut out. After this case, swimming sections of 10 other clubs will be processed. Women's swimming was the most methodically drugged East German sport and the most successful.

Most of the athletes involved are dreading their moment of fleeting fame, but some can hardly wait. Rica Reinisch, three-times Olympic swimming gold medallist, is one of the few to publicly denounce their tormentors.

"I was 14 when my coach, Uwe Neumann, first handed over the blue pills," she recalled in a magazine interview last year. "He said: `Come, little girl, swallow these vitamins. You'll recover better.' Today, the same Mr Neumann works at the Olympic training centre in Leipzig. Hans-Joachim Wendler, another who is accused of propagating performance-enhancing drugs, also works as a doctor at the Olympic centre in Berlin."

May be not for much longer. These gentlemen are now helping Berlin prosecutors with their inquiries. Cases are also being put together against other perpetrators in different sports. When the court is finished with swimming, it will turn to athletics, followed by rowing, canoeing, weightlifting and cycling.

Did not the East Germans do well in these sports? And are not the unified Germans still performing amazingly well in the same disciplines? Perhaps it is a mere coincidence, but the leading German athletes today tend to have East German coaches, many of whom are on the list of 680. Among the suspects are a former doctor of last year's Tour de France winner, Jan Ullrich. The Olympic champion, Dagmar Hase, is also in danger of losing her coach, Bernd Henneberg, who used to train another former swimming star, Kristin Otto.

In women's swimming, it appears it was impossible to stay away from all the drugs. At the World Championships in Perth early this year, the Australian hosts objected to the chief of the German team, Winfried Leopold. Unlike most of his colleagues, Leopold had confessed to have known about doping, and served a four-year suspension after the fall of the Wall. The German authorities backed him in the dispute with the Australians and won, though mainly because the focus suddenly - and memorably - shifted to the contents of a Chinese suitcase.

The incident, nevertheless, gave a foretaste of further embarrassment when other trainers manufacturing medals for Germany are eventually unmasked. For whatever might have been the failings of East Germany, their coaches are reputed to be the best in the world. No German club can afford to shun their services, and many of them are going to extraordinary lengths to protect their new employees.

The Berlin investigators complain of lack of co-operation, not only from the clubs but also from national federations. Questionnaires are not being returned, inquiries are blocked in high places. Sport, it appears, simply does not want to know what went on in the East, because too many skeletons are rattling in cupboards in the West.

Life would be so much simpler if everyone would forget about the past. The world of sport in Germany is rooting for an uneventful trial in Berlin, but it is likely to be disappointed.