page_title: SV Dynamo
section_title: Doping controversies
hierarchical_section_title: SV Dynamo / Doping controversies
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Birgit Meinecke ADN-ZB Mittelstädt 1.7.81 Berlin: 32. DDR-Meisterschaften im Sportschwimmen (1. Tag)- Trainer Rolf Gläser und sein Schützling Birgit Meinecke (SC Dynamo Berlin), die am 4.7. 1981 ihren 17. Geburtstag während der titelkämpfe feiert, sind offensichtlich sehr zufrieden. Als Vorlaufschnellste über 100 m Freistil (56,32 s) machen sich beide berechtigre Medaillenhoffungen. (Siehe Ergebnisse in ADN-Meldung!)
context_page_description: The Sportvereinigung Dynamo was the sport association of the security agencies of former East Germany. The association was founded on 27 March 1953 and was headquartered in Hohenschönhausen in East Berlin. From the date of its inception until 23 November 1989 the president of the SV Dynamo was Erich Mielke, the Minister of State Security.
  Dynamo was set up following the multi-sports club model developed in the Soviet Union and adopted throughout Eastern Europe. From the beginning it had an overtly political as well as sporting agenda and its many successes were always portrayed as a triumph of the German Democratic Republic. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, SV Dynamo was liquidated. At its height, the association had a membership of over 280,000 members. Athletes of the association enjoyed considerable success both in national and international competitions, winning for example more than 200 olympic medals. After German reunification in 1990 the systematic doping of Dynamo athletes from 1971 until 1989 was revealed by the German media. Doping was done under the supervision of the Stasi and with full backing of the government.
context_section_description: The Sportvereinigung Dynamo was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former East Germany. Many former club officials and some athletes found themselves charged after the dissolution of the country. A special page on the internet was created by doping victims trying to gain justice and compensation, listing people involved in doping at the club, the so-called Dynamo Liste.
  State-endorsed doping began with the Cold War when every eastern bloc gold was an ideological victory. From 1974, Manfred Ewald, the head of the GDR's sports federation, imposed blanket doping. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the country of 17 million collected nine gold medals. Four years later the total was 20 and in 1976 it doubled again to 40. Ewald was quoted as having told coaches, "They're still so young and don't have to know everything." He was given a 22-month suspended sentence, to the outrage of his victims.
  Often, doping was carried out without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse, one of them is Rica Reinisch, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts. Athletes like Renate Vogel, silver medalist at the 1972 Olympics in the swimming competitions, were told the injections were vitamins but failed to believe the explanation and quit her sport.
  Two former Dynamo Berlin club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 80, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East-Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances. Binus was sentenced in August, Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.
  Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drug test, though Stasi files show that many did, indeed, produced positive tests at Kreischa, the Saxon laboratory (German:Zentrale Dopingkontroll-Labor des Sportmedizinischen Dienstes) that was at the time approved by the International Olympic Committee, now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS).
  In 2005, fifteen years after the end or the GDR, the manufacturer of the drugs in former East Germany, Jenapharm, still finds itself involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes. Many of the substances handed out were, even under East German law, illegal.
  Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes who publicly admitted to doping, accusing their coaches:
  Daniela Hunger
  Andrea Pollack
  Katharina Bullin
  Andreas Krieger
  Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes disqualified for doping:
  Ilona Slupianek (Ilona Slupianek tested positive along with three Finnish athletes at the 1977 European Cup, becoming the only East German athlete ever to be convicted of doping). Based on the self-admission by Pollack, the United States Olympic Committee asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 Olympics. Despite court rulings in Germany that substantiate claims of systematic doping by some East German swimmers, the IOC executive board announced that it has no intention of revising the Olympic record books. This is an understandable decision as it could otherwise trigger a flood of such claims involving former eastern bloc athletes. In rejecting the American petition on behalf of its women's medley relay team in Montreal and a similar petition from the British Olympic Association on behalf of Sharron Davies, the IOC made it clear that it wanted to discourage any such appeals in the future.
caption: Birgit Meineke with coach Rolf Gläser
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