slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
A report by German researchers claims West Germany's athletes were systematically doped with government backing from the 1970s, and possibly earlier.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper publicized details from the unpublished 800-page report titled "Doping in Germany from 1950 to today" on Saturday, revealing the extent to which West German politicians were allegedly willing to promote drug use among athletes to ensure international success.
According to the report, one interior minister — who wasn't identified — said at the time: "Our athletes should have the same conditions and services as the Eastern bloc athletes."
The report was put together by researchers at Berlin's Humboldt University on behalf of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, with Giselher Spitzer as the project leader. It was completed in April, but has yet to be published because of privacy concerns and legal issues over naming athletes, doctors and politicians.
The report claims that for years the state financed experiments with performance-enhancing substances such as anabolic steroids, testosterone, estrogen or the blood-doping agent EPO. It did not state when the experiments ended.
It also states that an unspecified number of footballers in the 1954 World Cup-winning team received injections of the methamphetamine Pervitin, commonly known today as speed, according to the newspaper.
The authors say West German doping did not evolve as a response to East Germany's systematic doping under the Communist government, but rather that it operated parallel to it.
The conditions for "systemic doping" were laid in 1970 when the Federal Institute of Sport Science (BISp) was founded under jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry, which is still responsible for sports.
The BISp provided funding for research into doping substances for years, with sports medicine facilities in Freiburg, Cologne and Saarbruecken among the main recipients, the report says.
"There's a systemic connection between research and forbidden substances and in using them for athletes," Spitzer, the project leader for the report, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview last year. "That's why we call it systemic doping."
Doping existed in Germany long before the establishment of the BISp.
Amphetamines were used by German soldiers during World War II and their continued use in German soccer from the end of the 1940s became "normal," according to the study.
The historians uncovered a letter dated Nov. 29, 1966, in which FIFA medical committee chairman Mihailo Andrejevic wrote of "very fine traces" of the banned stimulant ephedrine found in three unidentified German players at the 1966 World Cup.
cont at
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...stematically-doped-athletes-olympics/2615323/
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper publicized details from the unpublished 800-page report titled "Doping in Germany from 1950 to today" on Saturday, revealing the extent to which West German politicians were allegedly willing to promote drug use among athletes to ensure international success.
According to the report, one interior minister — who wasn't identified — said at the time: "Our athletes should have the same conditions and services as the Eastern bloc athletes."
The report was put together by researchers at Berlin's Humboldt University on behalf of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, with Giselher Spitzer as the project leader. It was completed in April, but has yet to be published because of privacy concerns and legal issues over naming athletes, doctors and politicians.
The report claims that for years the state financed experiments with performance-enhancing substances such as anabolic steroids, testosterone, estrogen or the blood-doping agent EPO. It did not state when the experiments ended.
It also states that an unspecified number of footballers in the 1954 World Cup-winning team received injections of the methamphetamine Pervitin, commonly known today as speed, according to the newspaper.
The authors say West German doping did not evolve as a response to East Germany's systematic doping under the Communist government, but rather that it operated parallel to it.
The conditions for "systemic doping" were laid in 1970 when the Federal Institute of Sport Science (BISp) was founded under jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry, which is still responsible for sports.
The BISp provided funding for research into doping substances for years, with sports medicine facilities in Freiburg, Cologne and Saarbruecken among the main recipients, the report says.
"There's a systemic connection between research and forbidden substances and in using them for athletes," Spitzer, the project leader for the report, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview last year. "That's why we call it systemic doping."
Doping existed in Germany long before the establishment of the BISp.
Amphetamines were used by German soldiers during World War II and their continued use in German soccer from the end of the 1940s became "normal," according to the study.
The historians uncovered a letter dated Nov. 29, 1966, in which FIFA medical committee chairman Mihailo Andrejevic wrote of "very fine traces" of the banned stimulant ephedrine found in three unidentified German players at the 1966 World Cup.
cont at
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...stematically-doped-athletes-olympics/2615323/
