East Germans Dominate Medal Count
February 25, 2002
The beer steins will be overflowing, the bratwurst simmering on the grill as Germany gets ready to welcome home their Winter Olympic team – the most successful in the history of the Winter Games.
"We’re the best in the world!" gushed the front page banner headline of the tabloid Bild, Germany’s largest-circulating daily.
German athletes hauled in an unprecedented 35 medals, 12 of them gold. The country had 10 multiple medal winners, among them ice skating queen Claudia Pechstein. Her two golds, combined with the two golds won in 1994 and 1998, one silver and two bronze medals make her the most decorated German Olympian in history.
Bild has renamed her "Claudia Goldstein."
The 30-year-old has another distinction: she is one of 29 of the 48 medal winners to come from the former East Germany. The DDR was an Olympic machine in its day – literally.
Doping for success in the DDR
Sporting talent was discovered and nurtured at a very young age, often, according to a recent court case, with the help of performance-enhancing drugs. The doping brought success: East Germans almost always ranked high in the medal count, leaving their countrymen in the West far behind.
With the collapse of the DDR in 1990 came the revelation that a large number of the country’s Olympic athletes were doped during their medal-winning performances.
German prosecutors brought cases against 11 people involved in the East German sporting machine in the Summer of 2000. Though the trial was hurried, a picture of the horrible side effects of athletic achievement in the former communist state began to emerge.
The estimated 10,000 former East German athletes the prosecutors represented told horror story after horror story. Physical and psychological damage, miscarriages and tumors were the dirty aftermath of a life of athletic achievement that started at a very young age.
The drug-free generation flourishes
The German Olympians in Salt Lake City were the first generation not churned out by the doping machine. Of the 160 plus members of the German team, non tested positive for any sort of performance-enhancing drug at these games.
The Olympic legacy of the DDR was apparent in one respect: of the 29 medal winners from the former East Germany, 12 came from the city of Oberhof.
The Thuringian city was the anvil from which future East German winter champions were fashioned. Government officials had a ski jump hill, luge and bobsleigh tracks, and a cross-country and biathlon run built to train athletes.