(West) German Doping Scandal

From Jenex/V2 site - News Sept 2 (Len Johnson):

German Doping Scandal: The rumors have been around for years, even
before the bicycle racers in Telekom (later T-Mobile) admitted they
were performance enhanced by researchers at Freiburg University. Now
there is evidence that West Germany, not just the former East Germany,
have been systematically doping athletes since the 1950's. Two
researchers have already left the University of Freiburg and many more
are expected to be indicted. An International commission of three
biomedical professors and three Judges are presently investigating the
doping scandal. One of the three professors is Bengt Saltin, famous
Swedish doctor known for his hemoglobin research. The commission is
expected to make their first report in December of this year.

What is known to date is that for many decades Freiburg University
researchers have provided German athletes with hormone and blood doping
formulations. This is probably the biggest scandal ever in German
sports. We are presently only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Andreas
Schmid and Lothar Heinrich have already been expelled from the
University. Professor George Huber, who was the chief medical doctor at
the 2002 Salt Lake and the 2006 Turin Olympics is also involved and has
been relived of many duties at the University. The Directors of the
University stated that researchers at Freiburg University would no
longer be working with the 1,500 elite German athletes. It appears that
the University of Freiburg was the center of athletic performance
enhancement by doping. The Dean of the University stated he did not
know how the drugs were obtained or who paid for them. ( Sounds like
crock to me. )

It apparently began in 1952 when Doctor Reindell, working with the
famous running coach Woldemar Geschler at Freiburg, decided to use
drugs. Woldemar coached a mediocre middle distance runner named Joseph
Bartel. At the time, Joseph Bartel was ranked 41st in the world. Oscar
Wegener, a colleague of professor Reindell, recently said that when
Joseph Bartell won the Gold medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics it was
strictly due to being doped with Pervitin, a substance given to world
war two German soldiers to make them feel temporarily invincible.
Apparently a very powerful drug.

After professor Reindell retired, the person that took over the
department for performance enhancing research was Josph Keul, a famous
professor who tried to prove that anabolic steroids were not dangerous.
One of the researchers working with Dr. Keul was Dr. Ernst Jacob. At
the Turin 2006 Olympics there were several researchers from Freiburg
and when Evi Sachenbacher was caught for doping her doctor was Ernst
Jacob. Wonder what all these performance enhancing drug doctors were
doing at the Olympics? Don't think they were just supplying water and
Gatorade.

In 1977 professor Wolfgang Schauble, also at Freiburg University, said:
"We want to use these substances only in restrictive and controlled
conditions by medical experts, because in certain sports we can not be
internationally competitive without these substances."

What do you think Wolfang Schauble is doing today? He is the German
Minister of Athletics. This story about German doping is just
beginning. It's a really sad mess. Wonder if other German cross country
skiers besides Evi are involved.

Wow!

JW

Yes part of Freiburg University is specialized in sport medicine. But
no, it's not doping institute of Germany. Sure they were supporting
athletes, including cyclists, xc skiers and biathletes, just as
kayakers, basketball players, football players and pretty much any
other athlete there is. Their support is (or was, since I'm out of top
level sport for too long to know exactly what's happening, and
newspaper rumors are not best source of information) ranging from
normal medical examinations to technique research, and well... to
performance enhancement (allowed and, just to be on safe side I will
say probably, not allowed way).
But no matter what, it's pretty hard to talk about government
supported systematical doping. Things are still much different then
they were 20 or 30 years ago (not just in East Germany and Soviet
Union, but in west world too).
So if University of Freiburg is marked as doping institute, any
university on World specialized in sport, especially in top level
sport, can be marked as doping institute. Things in top level sport
are not such as they look for outside spectator. If we like it or
not

PS: Just to avoid some misunderstanding, I'm not German and I don't
have and never had anything to do with Uni of Freiburg, so I'm not
trying to defend them. I'm just trying to be realistic

Take care, Primoz