By Martin Gillingham - 29 April 2009
 

A prominent International Olympic Committee official claimed last week that former East German coaches deserve a second chance.

 

It is now two decades since the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the truth about the East Germans’ sporting regime was exposed. At the heart of the DDR’s Olympic success was a regime of performance-enhancing drugs with almost 10,000 athletes being subjected to a doping programme that ran throughout the 1970s and ‘80s.
 

 

According to Thomas Bach, vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, the time has now come to extend the hand of reconciliation to coaches from the old East Germany. But it’s an offer that comes with conditions - an admission of involvement, an apology, and evidence of a clean doping past since German reunification.

It’s an offer that seems entirely reasonable. Yet, not surprisingly, it splits opinion in the once divided nation. Earlier this month, five leading East German coaches apologised for their past though the gesture was dismissed as “superficial” by Klaus Zoellig who heads up the Doping Victims Aid group.
 

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the side-effects of those drugs have caused illness, disability and even death. Understandably, some are not yet ready to forgive.
 

One organisation you shouldn’t expect to pass judgment on the morality of forgiving former East German coaches and welcoming them back into the fold is the British Olympic Association (BOA).
 

That’s because the BOA did it 18 years ago when, without any apparent concern for the ethical question, they rolled out the red carpet to Jurgen Grobler.
 

With Grobler a key figure in East German rowing, the now defunct communist state won 45 Olympic medals, 31 of them gold. A former colleague once described Grobler as having been within the “inner circle” of the East German sporting programme.
 

Yet no sooner had the Wall been ripped down than Grobler was scuttling across the North Sea and into a privileged new life in the UK where he got straight to work with the Amateur Rowing Association in Henley. No debates there about whether it was right and proper that an East German coach should be so swiftly forgiven for the sins of his very recent past.
 

According to an interview broadcast on the BBC’s Newsnight programme 11 years ago, Grobler said he did not want to talk about his past. “I have to live with what went on in East Germany,” he claimed. “I was born in the wrong place. It was not possible to walk away.”
 

Grobler admitted during the interview that he had “difficulties” with the thought of the former rowers who had health problems but added: “No one was pushed. They always had the choice to walk away.”
 

He denied being a Stasi member but admitted giving them occasional snippets of information.
 

Were we to adopt Mr Bach’s criteria for candidacy for forgiveness, Grobler ticks no more than one of three boxes. As yet there has been neither a confession nor apology.
 

Since Grobler’s arrival in the Home Counties he has coached the likes of Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent to a hatful of Olympic golds. And though there is, of course, no suggestion that drugs formed any part of their regime that is hardly the point. What is, though, is the speed with which not only British rowing but also two of our greatest Olympians embraced him.

 

According to the BBC’s 1998 investigation, the Amateur Rowing Association’s then president Martin Brandon Bravo admitted that the issue of drugs and the former East Germany was never raised in their discussions with Grobler prior to him being offered a job. Sir Steve has even boasted that he was part of the panel that appointed him. So trusted is Grobler by Pinsent that he’s godfather to one of his kids.
 

The only conclusion is that along with our posturing and pomposity where fair play is concerned, we are so abundant in forgiveness that we’d make St Francis of Assisi look like a scallywag.
 

In 2004, the BOA gave Grobler a lifetime achievement award (note the ‘lifetime’ bit – no effort there to differentiate between his work in the GDR and here in the UK) while the Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has even bestowed upon him an honorary OBE.
 

Meanwhile back in 1998, Sir Steve said this of his former mentor: “I’ve known Jurgen for the seven years he’s coached me and if there was any involvement (in drugs) it would be the system and not the man himself to blame.”
 

You could hardly make it up could you?

 

Martin Gillingham represented Great Britain in the 1984 Olympic Games and 1987 World Championships at the 400 metres hurdles. Since retiring from the track he spent 12 years in South Africa where he was a radio talk show presenter and writer for a Sunday newspaper. He returned to the UK in 2003 and can now be heard commentating on athletics for Eurosport as well as rugby for Sky Sports, ITV and Setanta.

 

Comments


Well done Martin for pointing out that the British were prepared
to give a home to Herr Grobler, a man as involved as any other
East German coach in what want on. Sometimes I am staggered by
the hyprocisy of the British over drugs.
By Abused German

21 May 2009 at 02:10am