One Tale of Doping and Birth Defects


By ALAN MAIMON, New York Times

BERLIN, Feb. 5 -- In 1972, a committee from the swimming federation in the East German town of Halberstadt went to the local primary school looking for children who wanted to take part in a swimming program. Six-year-old Martina Fehrecke loved to play in the water, so she raised her hand.

Today, as she recounts her experiences with the East German national swimming program, Ms. Fehrecke Gottschalt says she wishes she had sat still that day in school.

As things turned out, she grew up too fast and still carries the bitter reminders of being one of the victims of a systematic East German doping program that claimed dozens of casualties through the unknowing wholesale use of anabolic steroids. Scores of swimmers, most of whom never saw Olympic competition, have major medical problems. Some, like Ms. Gottschalt, have children with birth defects.

Lothar Kipke, head doctor of the East German Swimming Federation, who oversaw the drug program from 1975 to 1985, was convicted last month on charges of doping and causing bodily harm to 58 swimmers in the latest of a series of highly publicized court cases. And in May, two other former high-ranking East German sports officials will go on trial for their roles in doping in the country's overall sports system.

The verdict in Dr. Kipke's case did not result in compensation for swimmers who gave birth to handicapped children, but Dr. Werner Franke, a German molecular biologist whose research on the subject was the impetus for the first criminal inquiry into doping two years ago, believes there is a link.

"It is clear that the taking of male hormones led to gynecological changes," Dr. Franke said. "One of the changes could have been a shrinking of the uterus, which would have affected the fetus. The fact that many of the birth defects are in first-born children is significant. The longer these women were away from the steroids, the longer their bodies had a chance to start producing female hormones again."

In a 1998 trial, in which four East German coaches and two doctors were accused of seriously injuring female athletes, 19 testified that their bodies took signs of masculinity, deeper voices or facial and body hair.

According to secret files recovered from the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, some women were ordered to abort fetuses that might have been deformed by the drugs. Petra Kind-Schneider, a gold-medal swimmer in the 1980 Olympics, now has liver and heart problems. Rica Reinisch, another gold-medal swimmer, has said publicly that she was given steroids at age 12 without knowing what they were and now suffers from ovarian cysts.

There are other problems as well for these swimmers, who are now in their 30's, said Giselher Spitzer, a sports psychologist at the University of Potsdam.

"The psychological implications of being doped are immense," the psychologist said. "These women live with the fact that their successes were a result of having cheated. Their identities are still very much connected with swimming, and they now fear that they are not able to accomplish anything on their own. Added to that is the fact that these drugs were administered along with birth control pills. That can have unbelievable psychological consequences. Most disturbing is that these problems may not fully manifest themselves until these women are well into middle age."

A Regimen of Pills and Harsh Training

Ms. Gottschalt's case is typical. By age 10, she had so impressed local coaches that she was invited to attend a boarding school for promising young swimmers in Magdeburg, the state capital. "I was a little kid off to the big city," she said recently from her living room in Halberstadt. "They gave me a brand-new bathing suit. It was all so exciting."

The fun stopped the moment Ms. Gottschalt stepped off the train in Magdeburg. Her new school made swimming her life, requiring nine hours of training a day. By evening, she was exhausted and in tears, she said, because of constant verbal abuse by coaches. Even a nose broken in practice one day could not elicit sympathy or a short break.

She excelled, nonetheless, improving her performances until she was at the top of her age group. The new routine had its benefits, like being served bananas -- a rarity at the time in East Germany -- in the school cafeteria. But she also had to take 40 pills a day, including little blue ones taken under strict supervision. Along with the pills came orders to keep that fact secret from her parents.

"Other girls got them, too," Ms. Gottschalt said. "The doctors told us they were vitamins and we believed them. When you're 12 years old, you don't ask any questions."

But the pressure to be the best began to take its toll. One afternoon, she confessed to the school director that she was having doubts about continuing with the program. The director calmly explained that giving up swimming could have negative consequences for her parents, both of whom worked at her former school in Halberstadt.

Her parents were summoned to the school for an emergency meeting the next day. She never found out what threats were made, she said; she only knows that her father said she would have to continue swimming.

In 1979, she won national championships for 13-year-olds in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke. Her times, 1 minute 8.41 seconds in the 100 and 2:27.79 in the 200, were outstanding for her age and in the top 20 among East German swimmers. More incredibly, she beat her best previous time in the 200 by a full three seconds.

"Maybe then I should have known something was wrong," she said.

The opening of the files of the Stasi included a report from 1975 by Hans Schuster, head of the Research Institute for Fitness in Sport in Leipzig. Mr. Schuster wrote that anabolic steroids were prescribed in both combination and pure form and that they led to a "considerable improvement in performance." He added that the drugs resulted in "liver damage and changes in physical appearance" when taken by girls and young women.

With women's swimming a government priority, an East German swimming team that did not win a single gold medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics captured 11 gold medals four years later in Montreal. Ms. Gottschalt, although a long shot, represented one of the hopes for the Moscow Games in 1980 or beyond.

"Pills, injections, teas," Ms. Gott schalt said. "I was always getting something. They must have been experimenting with new ways to administer the drugs at that point."

Ms. Gottschalt never made it to Moscow for the 1980 Olympics. As a junior champion, she was invited to take part in national qualifications, but she did not improve on her times from the previous year. The stress and the drugs were too much for her physically and emotionally, she said. The federation promoted other young swimmers, including Kristin Otto, whom Ms. Gottschalt had beaten at the 1979 age-group meet. Ms. Otto went on to win six gold medals at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

"I was expendable," Ms. Gott schalt said. "We all were. They bred us to be winners, and there was always someone to take your place."

Widespread Doping, Widespread Angst

Ms. Gottschalt recalled that in 1981, when she was 15, she left the swimming school and returned home to hear friends and family remark about how the little girl had developed into a muscle-bound woman with a deep voice. Other problems ensued: liver ailments, a hardening of back muscles; in 1984 she gave birth to a son with a clubfoot. Gott schalt believes her baby's deformity was a result of her being given drugs. As years passed and her anger grew, she wondered exactly what the little blue pills had contained.

"I didn't think anyone cared enough about what happened to me to take any interest," she said. "I gave up thinking anything might happen."

Hope was restored last year when Ms. Gottschalt received a call from Michael Lehner, a German lawyer who specializes in doping-related lawsuits. Mr. Lehner brought the criminal case against Dr. Kipke, and with the public prosecutor helped try it. Mr. Lehner represented Ms. Gott schalt in this trial, along with eight other female swimmers who, he said, also had children with birth defects.

Having read files kept by the swimming federation, Mr. Lehner learned that Ms. Gottschalt was a member of the B group of swimmers, young hopefuls who, according to the Stasi files, were to receive "supporting means" to improve their performance. "Supporting means" was code for the drug Oral-Turinabol, an anabolic steroid manufactured in East Germany.

Mr. Lehner embarked on a search for other former swimmers who had also been administered the little blue pills and who would be willing to testify. Court cases involving doping to that point had involved only swimmers from programs in the former East Berlin. Mr. Lehner widened the scope and found former members of teams in Magdeburg, Erfurt, Potsdam, Chemnitz, Halle, Rostock, Leipzig and Dresden who had been similarly doped.

Mr. Lehner spoke to Ute Krause, also a product of the Magdeburg program, and found that her experiences were nearly identical to Gott schalt's. After Ms. Krause left the swimming school in 1981, her voice was deeper, she had liver problems and she battled depression.

Years later, as the administrator of a nursing home in Magdeburg, Ms. Krause learned more about Oral-Turinabol. Certain patients were being prescribed the drug to help regain muscle loss because of illness. In a medical textbook, she read of the link between anabolic steroids and chronic depression. She made no additional efforts to find out more about what had happened to her until Mr. Lehner called.

"I suppressed what happened to me for so long," Ms. Krause said recently in Magdeburg. "I am still searching for my biography."

In early January, Ms. Gottschalt, 34, Ms. Krause, 37, and three other former East German swimmers were present in a Berlin courtroom for the trial of Lothar Kipke.

During his testimony, Dr. Kipke admitted that he had distributed anabolic steroids to the swimmers but contended that he was unaware that the drugs carried any adverse side effects other than a deepening of the voice. According to Dr. Kipke, as research increased in the 1980's, he began administering the steroids in lower dosages and only in pill form.

Ten feet from Dr. Kipke, Ms. Gott schalt listened to the doctor rationalize his actions. When she heard his lawyer explain that Dr. Kipke had only been following orders, Ms. Gott schalt exclaimed, "Say that to my son's face!" Daniel, her 14-year-old disabled son, sat beside her.

Ms. Krause seized the chance to address Dr. Kipke directly near the end of the trial. "He avoided making a direct apology," Ms. Krause said.

Mr. Lehner called Dr. Kipke a "monster."

"What gives a doctor that right to treat young girls like guinea pigs?" Mr. Lehner said.

At the end of the one-day trial, Judge Peter Faust ruled that Dr. Kipke had acted with "willful malevolence" in overseeing doping of the swimmers during his tenure as head doctor. Mr. Faust gave Dr. Kipke a 15-month suspended jail sentence, the most severe doping-related punishment meted out to a former East German official.

Dr. Kipke, 72, is the 26th East German sports official to be convicted on charges of doping. They were involved in swimming as well as other sports.

The verdict provided little solace for Ms. Gottschalt, who had hoped that the link between doping and birth defects would be addressed at the trial.

Mr. Faust declined Mr. Lehner's motion that the women whose children had birth defects receive financial compensation.

Lawyer Promises It's Not the End

We are going to pursue this further," Mr. Lehner said. "I am representing nine clients who gave birth to children with birth defects."

A member of the Berlin program, Barbara Krause, who won a gold medal on the East German freestyle relay team in the 1980 Olympics, has given birth to two children with clubfeet, according to Mr. Lehner. She has been unwilling to testify at the doping trials, however, because of her marriage to Lutz Wanja, a former swimming coach in Potsdam. Since the Kipke trial, Mr. Lehner has learned that a former swimmer in Leipzig has a 19-year-old daughter with a clubfoot.

In the next trial, for which no date has been set, Mr. Lehner plans to refer again to evidence yielded by the Stasi files, which show that East German doctors ordered female athletes to take birth control or have abortions because they feared Oral-Turinabol could damage fetuses.

In May, several months before the statute of limitations runs out on the prosecution of middle-level East German criminals, Manfred Ewald and Manfred Höppner will have their day in court. Dr. Höppner, head doctor of the East German sports medicine service, oversaw an unofficial group that the prosecution contends was the committee for all doping programs. Mr. Ewald, former president of the East German Athletics Association, wrote a book chronicling his control over East German sports.

Ms. Gottschalt said she would be in the courtroom again. And to current swimmers caught up in the latest controversy over the use of dietary supplements like creatine to improve performance, Ms. Gottschalt offers her own sobering advice.

"Just leave it," she said. "It's not worth it. Let your body perform on its own."