Steroids and Justice

Abstract

The second half of our analysis of doping in East German sport picks up on the story of the comprehensive system as it evolved from the mid-1970s onwards. Here we discuss the number of people involved in administering drugs and those being doped; the dosage of drugs administered and to whom, including minors; and the effects of long-term drug use on athletes’ well-being. We then turn to the final, troublesome decade of the state’s existence, the 1980s. The complex doping apparatus functioned against the backdrop of a fast deteriorating economy, internal political pressure to perform better — including ever fewer children feeding into the elite sport talent and training pool (see Chapter 3) — and increasing competition posed by external competitors professionalising their own sports systems. We finish with the post-Wende trials, an integral element in the complex and divisive process of seeking to come to terms with the East German doping past. As in other areas of German-German legal proceedings following the collapse of the GDR, courts of justice dealing with sport and doping were rife with allegations, counter-allegations, denials and accusations of ‘victor’s justice’ by the West.