PBS Special on GDR Doping

[bambam]

Secrets of the Dead: Doping for Gold
Wednesday, May 7, 8:00pm
Doping for Gold

This is on PBS tomorrow night - but as they say, check your local listings. Also available on DVD at

http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.js ... Id=3087963

This is a history of doping in the former GDR.

Courtesy of Rusty Wilson from the sports history listserv

[ed gee]

Or watch it now online.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/?p=42

[Marlow]

Seems to be all swimming - is there specific T&F info also?

[AS]

Seems to be all swimming - is there specific T&F info also?

Chapter 2 (2.50min-4min) 77 Euro Champs...
Chapter 3 quickly leads into an interview with Tessa Sanderson about the frustration of being beaten by "cheats" and of the temptation to also dope up...and about 4mins into that Chapter there is the stunning tale of a female SPer who ultimately had gender reassignment...Ruth Fuchs is mentioned at the 17-18 min mark and Sanderson appears again...

[dupontred]

A bit disappointing for me, but I am somewhat familiar with the subject.

I would have loved more detail or more interviews with athletes. 10,000 athletes doped, and they talked to 4 of them. And of the 4, only one really a big name (one swimmer). Well, two if you count Ruth Fuchs, but they didn't really talk to her, they just kinda reported back that she didn't disavow her experience.

What I would really have loved? Finding out the details of Marita Koch, Marlies Gohr and Ramona Neubert.

That and more footage of 70s and 80s athlete. I always hear that the EG women athletes looked like men, but short of Heidi Krieger ,I didn't really see that. Where were the swimmers that looked like men. Where were the sprinters who were ripped. The throwers who were huge? Oh, there was on tiny clip of Ilona Slupianet, but that was about it. I was still young at the time, so never saw any of these events in person, but I would love to see what they really looked like.

The only pictures I ever saw of them were in T&FN, and those pics were generally not that bad.

[marknhj]

I was around the East German's a great deal in that era, even spent a week at the Leipzig facility they showed in the late 1970's (without a change of clothes, my bags remained in Amsterdam). The E. German women didn't look any different than other female athletes. They were not unduly masculine in appearance, neither did they sound like men. And they were very pleasant, although understandably guarded, as they knew they were being watched closely, even by teammates who reported to the Stasi.

I found the program to be very moving in showing these athletes were first-and-foremost people, just like you and me, but who were being used and abused. We knew they were drugged, but were also aware that a significant number of western athletes were too. In that context we did not think they were much different than the Americans, fellow Brits, West Germans, French, Spanish, or other Eastern Bloc countries. What we were envious of was their system. The fact that they were state-supported, full-time athletes, in an era when the sport was supposed to be amateur. Most of us had jobs/school and trained in the evenings only.

I'll admit to having a wry smile when the two swimmers were talking, and the East German asked the American if her team was 100% clean. She of course replyed "yes". Well, I for one doubt that.

I do feel incredibly sorry for those who were denied medals by the East German doping machine but feel equally sorry for those denied medals since it ended. It's a travesty. But, I also feel very sorry for the East German athletes subjected to that regimes naked ambitions.

[Marlow]

As much as I do believe the ill effects of PEDs, esp. in the dosages and long-term usage of the DDR, but that program did little to connect the two. It's not like this was a double-blend test. There were too many variables to throw all this at the feet of the German scientists.

[gh]

....
That and more footage of 70s and 80s athlete. I always hear that the EG women athletes looked like men, but short of Heidi Krieger ,I didn't really see that. Where were the swimmers that looked like men. ......

The DDR women, in general, were (at least by general Western standards) hot-hot-hot. Androgynizing affects virtually nonexistent. I don't recall Krieger one way or another, but suspect that if she were mannish it was because she was born that way (and was on the way to a sex change operation no matter what program she was on).

The mannish women were the Soviets of the '50s/'60s era in the duals with the U.S., starting with the "Press Brothers."

[dupontred]

Good to know. Thanks!

And then there's Jarmila Kratochvilova

[cullman]

Secrets of the Dead: Doping for Gold
Wednesday, May 7, 8:00pm
Doping for Gold

It's a repackaging of a BBC documentary entitled, "The Great Olympic Drug Scandal" that was broadcast last September.

cman