THE SPORT OF ROWING and early ‘70s and found that drugs in rowing were of no benefit. “Jürgen was a graduate of Leipzig’s [Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur], the nerve center of GDR sport since the ‘50s and an institution that had earned itself a reputation as a leader in hormone-doping research. Two performance-enhancing drugs had been produced for use in rowing, Clomiphen and Oral-Turinabol. They were used to boost growth hormones, mainly in women but also in men, and were developed in the build-up to the 1980 Olympics in which GDR won eleven of fourteen [rowing] Golds. The drugs were issued to athletes as young as ten.5535 Matheson: “I would never suggest that in 1976 we should, or would, have won the VIIIs final but for DDR doping. “There were many reasons why they won and not us, full-time training and the whole support system, which you describe, among them. Additionally, they were clean by the time they reached any race venue. “The doping programme was devoted to enabling more and harder training in winter rather than stimulants for peak performances in season.”5536 John Riley, 3-man in the World Champion 1986 U.S. Coxless-Four:5537 “I was friends with the Grünau/Dresden Four5538 that we raced in ‘86 and ‘87. Once the unification happened, that boat was disbanded. They were done rowing, and after ‘90 I hung out with Olaf Förster, the stroke of that four, and with Kirsten, his wife. “When I saw Bruno,5539 the 3-man, in ‘91 in Vienna, he looked like someone had just vacuum-shrunk him. He looked like 5535 Redgrave, op. cit., p. 208 5536 Matheson, op. cit. 5537 See Chapter 132. 5538 See later in this chapter. 5539 Ralf Brudel. someone had just sucked out thirty pounds of muscle from him. I smiled at him and said, ‘What happened to you?’ and he said, ‘No more . . . ’ and he motioned like injecting into his arm. I laughed. He wasn’t even keeping it a secret. “The chemical abuse of East Germany and the Soviet Union allowed them to train in ways volume-wise that we couldn’t if we weren’t juicing. And it wasn’t juice to get bigger. It was juice to recover.”5540 Matheson: “The [Stasi] papers describe how the metabolism of some athletes failed to clear the crud in time for testing so they came off the treatment earlier than others. So, we were never beaten by doped athletes but by athletes who came from a programme where doping was as systematic and as thoughtful as all the other elements which combined to make success.”5541 Dick Tonks, New Zealand Head Coach today who stroked the 1972 Kiwi Olympic Silver Medal Coxless-Four behind GDR:5542 “I talked to a guy who came out here [to Lake Karapiro] just the end of last year [2009]. He had raced in the coxed-pairs here for East Germany in 1978. “He was talking about the training back then. Three 20k rows a day. We’re not even doing that now! I tried this year to . . . [Shakes his head] . . . Unbelievable! That’s why they won . . . That’s why they won. To be able to do that . . . and do their weights, and whatever else they used to do? “Every stroke was exactly the same, but every stroke had an individuality about it, a life, y’know? I thought they were good, drugs or not, they were good! They were superb, right across the board.”5543 Another GDR Olympic coach who emigrated to the West was Hartmut 5540 Riley, personal conversation, 2009 5541 Matheson, op. cit. 5542 See Chapter 120. 5543 Tonks, personal conversation, 2010 1524
