The wait of history: How and why East German medals should be reallocated

Before the early 1970s, East Germany hadn’t conceived the idea that doping athletes might blaze the country’s path to international recognition and supremacy. It soon did.For the 1968 Olympic Games, German Democratic Republic athletes’ achievements were commensurate with the country’s population of about 17 million. In Mexico City, East Germany’s flag unfurled 25 times; the GDR finished fifth on the nations’ medal table.

We also know that more than 10,000 athletes, mostly female and the majority children, were forced into being doped. The performances by East German athletes between 1972 and 1988 are undeniably ridiculous.Petra Schneider was brought into the state’s program as a 14-year-old. After one year of being given Oral Turinabol, her times in the 400-metre individual medley plummeted by 17 seconds. As a 17-year-old in 1980, she won the gold medal in that event in world-record time.

If an athlete took steroids during the year leading up to the 1976 Games, was that doping? If the same athlete passed all doping control tests conducted at those Games under the International Olympic Committee’s then rules, did the athlete commit a doping offence? Even if we accept that all 489 Olympic medals won by East German athletes between 1972-88 constitutes the manifestation of doping en masse, we still need solid evidence of cheating in individual cases if medals are to be reallocated. That evidence may exist; it may not.

That provision exists in the IOC’s current rules, whereas we’re considering facts and circumstances between 52 and 36 years old. Then there is the matter of the burdens carried by the East German athletes themselves. It must be remembered they are victims, too.be done? One idea is the establishment of something akin to a special reparations commission that would operate as a forum for athletes affected by the East German doping scandal to petition for redress in specific cases.

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