The sports doctors of the former East Germany kept gymnasts low with the help of anabolics, writes the respected weekly "Spiegel". After the end of their careers, female athletes were injected with growth hormones extracted from cadavers. Many former gymnasts are disabled today.
The pictures in the album with the brown cover have already turned yellow. They show the career of the once great hope of East German gymnastics. One of the photos shows a smiling girl at the announcement of the winner. Hejke has just become the school champion of East Germany on the hard surface.
Another photo shows Hajke together with Maxi Gnauk - the two warming up before the start of the tournament in Cuba. Maxi Gnauk was a big star in East Germany - she won a gold medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and was awarded the Golden National Order for Special Merit. Hejke was also among the candidates for the competition in Moscow and was supposed to increase the glory of the socialist countries. However, before the start of the competition, she dropped out of the team.
Hajke M. puts the album on the table of his house near Berlin and sits down on a chair. He is now 52 years old. A thin, elegant woman with blond hair speaks in a calm tone about the life of a gymnast, about seven-hour training sessions every day except Sundays. "Gymnastics defined my whole life," she says.
Hajka's hands are calmly placed on the table, she calmly and measuredly talks about the agony she had to survive in the hall.
"Since the seventh grade, not a single day has passed without feeling pain," she told the journalists of Špigla.
Sports doctors injected her with injections even during the competition. At the age of 16, she had to end her career for health reasons. Her body could not withstand the ever-increasing load on her spine in professional gymnastics, according to the medical explanation.
As "Spiegel" writes, Hajka's suffering did not end even after the withdrawal. More precisely, they were just beginning. Today she has a medical record 'worthy' of a long-term construction worker - she suffers from degeneration of cervical and lumbar vertebrae, rupture of triceps tendons, ossification of the elbow, inflammation of the hips, chronic headaches, pain in the shoulders and many muscle groups, depression.
Hajke M. is a school teacher. She did not want to reveal her full name, as she does not want the pity of her students and colleagues.
Only now, 36 years after she stopped doing gymnastics, did she discover the real reasons that led to her condition. Those reasons are one of the last secrets of the former sports superpower - East Germany.
The doctors of that country openly played Frankenstein with young gymnasts like Hajka. First they were given anabolic steroids. Male hormones kept girls short and hardy. Later, when they were no longer able to play professional sports, they were given growth hormone. Extracted from human corpses.
Manipulation of growth represents inhuman torments to which top gymnasts were exposed in the seventies of the XNUMXth century, but most likely still today.
The combinations that today's world-class gymnasts perform are even more spectacular than when Hejke competed. Modern female champions are on average six centimeters shorter than their counterparts from 1972.
Back in 1982, a specialist doctor at a Berlin clinic concluded that Hajke had paid dearly for her short sports career. The spine, knees and shoulders suffered about 20 percent damage, the report said.
Despite this, Hajke M. hoped that she would be able to lead a normal life. She married a weightlifter whom she met at her club in Berlin. Her husband, Urlih M, was expected to win Olympic gold in 1980
However, he injured his knee during one of the training sessions, so he had to end his career. Hajke M. studied, became a teacher and had two children. However, no matter what she did in her life, the pain was constantly present.
Over time, it became more and more difficult for her to fulfill her work obligations. "I want to work, but it's just not possible anymore."
She applied for retirement as a result of severe disability. The request was rejected, so her case reached the social court in Cottbus. The judge authorized Werner Franke, a molecular biologist from Heidelberg, to assess her health.
Hejke heard the whole story from him, since Franke had previously analyzed and evaluated the health problems of people from East Germany. Franke works as a scientist at the German Cancer Research Center, and for over 40 years he has been researching the effects of professional sports on the body.
His specialty is doping. He is familiar with secret documents from East Germany: while anabolics in weightlifting and athletics are primarily used to increase muscle strength, they also have other uses in gymnastics, figure skating and swimming. They contribute to rapid regeneration, so that you can train more and more.
East German sports doctors in top sports used hormones like STS 646 for these purposes.
As "Spiegel" writes, STS 646 had another additional goal for young gymnasts - it was supposed to keep the gymnasts short, since only short gymnasts are successful. However, the side effects are extremely serious.
When anabolic steroids are used before puberty, the epiphyseal plates at the ends of the long bones (arm and leg bones) close. This inhibits growth, the bones become calcified and, as a consequence, permanent damage occurs.
"In children, attention should be paid to accelerated sexual maturation and bone development," says the instructions for use of Oral-Turinabol, an East German Jenefarm anabolic. However, the instruction appeared only after the disappearance of East Germany.
In 1998, Gudrun Frener, a longtime doctor of the Gymnastics Association in East Germany, admitted to the court the use of steroids. Based on internal documents of East Germany, the systematic giving of STS 646 was part of the concept of the Alliance.
The use of hormones was essentially an obligation imposed by the state. Even then, there were those who opposed giving anabolics to children, and among them were many prominent medical workers. However, the use continued.
Hajke M. was 153 cm tall and weighed 43 kg when she finished her career in July 1979. She says she was also given loads of pills to take. She was told it was the vitamins. And while her boyfriend at the time, a weightlifter, was known to get the typical blue pills of anabolics, doping was a particularly well-kept secret among young gymnasts.
Neither the athletes nor their parents had any idea about it. In gymnastics, the conditions have never been clearly explained, and today many former gymnasts wonder why they remained short in height.
Anja Wilkenlo, the last champion of East Germany, is only 150 cm tall. The Berlin Association for Helping Victims of Doping is in contact with eight former gymnasts - all of whom have chronic pain in their spine, shoulders, feet and hips. Most of them also suffer from depression, a common side effect of anabolic steroids.
As "Spiegel" further writes, one of the victims of this inhumane system is Dagmar Kersten. This 152 cm tall and 43 kg gymnast from Berlin is the holder of a silver medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where she was also the most successful athlete from East Germany. Today, she is also recognized as a victim of doping at the German level.
So far, she has already had six operations on her ankles alone, her spine is severely damaged, and the pain causes chronic sleep disturbances. She says she was shocked when she found out after the disappearance of East Germany that she had been given anabolic steroids.
In her medical records, Kersten found that Bern Pansold, the head doctor of her club Dynamo Berlin, treated her according to the so-called "Kaiser Scheme". In the secret language of East German sports, this meant the continuous administration of hormonal preparations to athletes.
"To our sports officials, we were not people, but lab rats of sports medicine," she says.
Pansold is one of the few who has been convicted of complicity in inflicting grievous bodily harm. When she watches today's gymnastics competitions, Dagmar Kersten says that she sympathizes with the competitors and deeply feels sorry for them.
"When one sees the difficulty of the exercises performed by today's gymnasts, it is clear that unfortunately nothing has changed. The madness openly continues".
As a representative of the Gymnastics Association of the province of Niedersachsen, Dagmar Kersten has one goal - to protect children from bullying and abuse of all kinds. She gives lectures in schools and in front of sports doctors about "the other side of the coin". There are still many officials, coaches, doctors, and even parents ready to do anything, just to get victories and medals.
In 1998, a professional journal in the field of pediatrics published a study on doping in American sports. Scientists were surprised to learn that the use of anabolic steroids, especially among young gymnasts, is so widespread.
A well-known pharmaceutical company at that time, VEB Arznei - Mittelwerk Dresden, obtained this preparation from the brain glands of corpses! A large number of patients after treatment with Sotropin developed Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which causes severe dementia and death.
"This finding is particularly disturbing," summarize the authors and add that the growth of teenagers is artificially stunted because short stature is believed to be a great advantage in gymnastics.
Since the mid-90s, the USA, with the help of coaches from the former Eastern Bloc, has been at the very top of world gymnastics. Spectacular exercises are pleasing to the eye - apparently this is a strong enough reason to destroy children's bodies.
Back in East Germany, doctors had methods to influence the regrowth of gymnasts after their careers ended. The aforementioned Dr. Werner Franke found in Hajka M.'s medical record evidence for a perfidious way of hiding the collateral damage of that inhumane sport.
Hajke M. was sent in 1979 to Kreiš in the Saxony region, to the then special clinic for the rehabilitation of top athletes. There, she received the growth preparation, Sotropin H, for at least six weeks.
A well-known pharmaceutical company at that time, VEB Arznei - Mittelwerk Dresden, obtained this preparation from the brain glands of corpses! A large number of patients after treatment with Sotropin developed Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which causes severe dementia and death.
Franke spoke to pathologists of the time, who said they never understood why some people were allowed to remove brain glands from cadavers.
Stopping taking anabolics and switching to growth hormone had consequences. Hajke grew 10 centimeters within a year. Not bad, one would say. However, the locomotor system did not cope with such torture. The result - damaged joints of the entire body, so Hajke was condemned to live with pain until the last day.
Hajka's degree of disability is somewhere around 50%, concluded Werner Franke. Hajka's husband died in 2007 as a result of acne inflammation, having spent his life in agony, but it has never been proven whether his death was related to anabolics.
For Ines Gajpel, chairwoman of the Association for Helping Victims of Doping, "the case of Hajka M. is a serious crime and the doctors responsible for it must be held accountable."
Werner Franke sees things the same way. In order to fully clarify and publicize the doping of girls, he filed a lawsuit against the responsible doctors and all other participants before the State Prosecutor's Office in Berlin for inflicting physical injuries on minors with lifelong consequences, "Spiegel" concludes.
Authors: Udo Ludwig, Thomas Purschke/Translation: Predrag Ozmo, B92
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