It was back in 1990 that the couple unearthed volumes of papers that detailed one of the most sinister chapters in sporting history. That treasure trove of documents, right out of the files of the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police organization, revealed the state’s systematic doping of its athletes throughout the 1970s and ’80s. At the core of the plot was this cheating credo, as explained in a 1975 report by one of the Stasi’s medical stooges: “For the majority of events, world-class performances cannot be achieved without the use of supporting means.”
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, provided that support in the form of steroids and all the latest and greatest in illegal potions from its secret laboratories. As a result, the world-class performances came in droves–golds upon silvers upon bronzes. The relatively small nation of just 16 million people rose up to rival the Soviet Union and the United States as an Olympic power–dominating glamour sports like swimming and track and field and the less glamorous like rowing, too.
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the GDR had won just 25 medals, a respectable finish that placed it slightly behind Hungary and Japan in the standings. The United States totaled 107 medals that year. Four years later in Munich, with its doping program still in its infancy, East Germany’s medal total rose to 66 medals. By another four years later in Montreal, that number had jumped to 90, including 40 gold medals, and, for the first time ever, the GDR topped America in both counts. The 1988 Seoul Olympics was East Germany’s last stand, the final Summer Games before the Berlin Wall came crashing down. That year the GDR won an extraordinary 102 medals.
As East German athletes ascended, there was plenty of speculation about what was responsible for all their astounding performances. But American athletes, many of whom were cheated out of their rightful glory, were cautioned not to air their suspicions and wind up cast as both losers and the ultimate bad sports. By the late ’90s, when the Chinese were emerging as the new superpower in swimming, U.S. coaches and athletes refused to repeat that sop to good manners. They publicly denounced China as the swimming world’s new East Germany (right down to the imported German scientists). The accusation would prove to be well founded. Over the ensuing years Chinese swimmers would be repeatedly caught cheating. In 2000, Australian customs officials discovered numerous vials of human growth hormone in the luggage of a member of the Chinese swim team headed for the Sydney Olympics.
The only real problem with U.S. sanctimony about the Chinese was the creeping suspicion that America itself was already in the throes of an epidemic of homegrown cheating. The governing bodies for U.S. sports seemed incapable, or possibly unwilling, to police the problem effectively. And today with the ever-widening Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) steroids scandal, it’s apparent that American free enterprise has replaced state socialism as the cutting edge of doping in sports. Today when an athlete is unmasked as a cheat, it is just as likely–or perhaps even more likely–that he or she will turn out to be an American.
Our country has been learning a painful lesson this past week in the consequences of losing the moral high ground. And perhaps it is wrong to even talk about doping in sports in the same story as the gruesome revelations in Iraq. Except that the East German tale has produced some pretty gruesome snapshots as well. Picture generations of elite athletes ravaged by severe health problems: cancers, heart disease, infertility, depression and miscarriages, as well as birth defects and deformities in their children. That, not medals, is the ultimate legacy of East Germany’s sports travesty.
We may someday see the same horrific consequences here. But in the meantime, the price we pay will be political–and it will be New York City that pays the most. Next week, New York hopes to celebrate some good Olympic news, namely that it is a survivor. On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee will pare the list of bid cities for the 2012 Olympics–now numbering nine–to an undetermined number of finalists. New York expects to join what will likely be a host of Europe’s big cities–London, Paris, Istanbul and Moscow–in the final showdown.
Yet even if New York City makes the cut, it is unfathomable to me that it can win the grand prize when IOC delegates vote in July 2005 in Singapore. That is not remotely New York’s fault; the city came up with a remarkably good, occasionally even brilliant, proposal that certainly might win if votes were cast simply on the merits. But even on the IOC, which boasts a decidedly American, corporate sensibility among its delegates, all the politics are cutting in the wrong direction for the United States. It is far more than the unpopular war in Iraq, though that will likely impact the process (especially with Paris in the fray). There is also substantial ill will toward America solely on Olympic grounds.
As they see it on the rest of the planet, it’s the folks here in the United States who have deplored–well in advance–the horrendous organization and security in Athens, when, of course, Atlanta was the biggest organizational fiasco in Olympic memory and suffered a bombing to boot. It’s the folks here who derided those greedy, third-world, IOC delegates, when we were the ones paying the bribes. And it’s the folks here who have done the most finger-pointing about illegal drugs when we are the vanguard of doping’s next frontier. Add it all up, then factor in the fallout from American foreign policy, and there’s no way that can be a winning parlay for NYC 2012.
