Sports physicians at the University of Freiburg have been doping top athletes from several disciplines for four decades. They were jointly responsible for world records, medals and many top performances that would probably have been unthinkable without doping measures. It didn’t end until 2007, when the Belgian cycling masseur Jeff d’Hont first reported on the doping practices at Team Telekom and the role played by sports physicians at the Freiburg University Hospital. Sports medicine in Freiburg deals with suitcases of anabolic steroids and other doping substances, deaths among athletes and, above all, one thing: the accusation of silence.
What I discovered while working for the evaluation committee reminded me again and again of the notorious Italian conditions.
Criminologist and mafia expert Letizia Paoli
In the Deutschlandfunk sports talk, two long-standing members of the Freiburg evaluation commission talk about their findings, the hurdles in the process and they formulate their conclusions, which they believe should be drawn for the system of German sport. Her book about her many years of work has just been published.
“This practice has been tolerated for far too long by the University of Fribourg, by organized sports associations and also by politicians. What I discovered while working for the evaluation commission reminded me again and again of the notorious Italian conditions,” said the criminologist and mafia tycoon. Expert Letizia Paoli in a sports talk. The Freiburg Sports Medicine Evaluation Commission was set up in 2007, two years later Letizia Paoli took over as chair. Internal disputes, unforeseeable events and obstacles that were repeatedly put in the way of the scouts from outside meant that the commission no longer saw the independence of their work as guaranteed. In 2016, under the presidency of Paoli, the last six remaining members of the commission resigned under protest without presenting a final report. In May 2022 they will jointly present the book “Doping for Germany”. It summarizes the findings on Freiburg sports medicine and also includes appeals to the sports system.
The Klümper, Keul & Co
How many athletes used the services of the Freiburg doctors has not yet been fully clarified. The criminologist Letizia Paoli, who has been researching organized crime, illegal drugs, doping and the associated control policy for years and teaches at the University of Leuven, assumes that “the vast majority of West German squad athletes have come to Freiburg regularly”.
Professor Klümper was the one who mainly treated and also wrote out prescriptions.
Hellmut Mahler, former deputy head of the Freiburg Sports Medicine Evaluation Committee
Paoli assumes that about 80 percent of the entire West German athlete squad. “Some of them were also doped directly by Professor Klümper and came regularly to the Department of Sports Medicine for examinations. It is unthinkable that Professor Keul and his staff did not see what an effect anabolic steroids have – especially on women. It is a Scandal that they didn’t do anything,” said the former chairman of the Freiburg Sports Medicine Evaluation Commission on Deutschlandfunk sports talk.
The sports physician Armin Klümper is considered to be the second string puller in the Freiburg doping headquarters alongside the long-standing chief physician of the German Olympic team Joseph Keul. The former deputy head of the commission, Hellmut Mahler, speaks of “a kind of division of labor” between the two sports doctors: “Professor Keul mainly assessed and examined the athletes. According to the motto: Is your liver still good and can you tolerate what you are getting. Professor Klümper was the one , who mainly treated and also issued prescriptions,” says Mahler. He is an expert for narcotics tests and toxicology at the LKA Düsseldorf and was the only member of the Freiburg Doping Commission to be there from start to finish.
Klümper – “the top doper of German sport”
Keul was careful. Klümper was responsible for the “dirty work”; he doped many athletes. “Often he would prepare and give irresponsible medicinal cocktails to athletes and other patients,” said Letizia Paoli. His “Klümper Cocktail” was famous, which West German athletes regularly picked up in the 70s and 80s.
According to the two authors, Professor Armin Klümper had a fine diagnostic instinct and recognized the problems of the athletes very quickly. And: He also gave them tips for training. “That’s why he was very popular – but also very irresponsible in his practice, which was tolerated for far too long, including by Keul,” said Paoli. Based on 60 file folders, which were long considered lost and then found in a branch office of the public prosecutor’s office in Freiburg, the commission was able to prove systematic doping in the case of Armin Klümper at the German Cyclists’ Association.
The wall of silence about Klümper’s actions in sport and politics is stable.
Quote from the book “Doping for Germany”
Based on the files, the commission also explained what a large network “of fans and protectors” Armin Klümper, who is considered a miracle healer, had. Therefore, according to the two commission chairmen, nothing was done against him for a long time.
Celebrity bonus for Klümper
Klümper not only treated well-known athletes who were connected to influential coaches or associations, but also prominent patients. “Such prominence, if you actually diagnose them correctly and then give them medication that takes their pain away, means that you feel a certain protection that you would have to show such a guru,” says LKA expert Hellmut Mahler. With a view to his work in the Commission, he does not even rule out the possibility of law enforcement agencies keeping their distance.
The struggle of the political systems
Another factor, from the point of view of the two commissioners, was politics. Hellmut Mahler calls it “desired systemic failure”. To this day, sport serves as a substitute for conflict between political systems. In the GDR he played a major role – and that’s still the case in other nationalistically thinking nations. He thinks it is a big mistake for the West and for democracies to play this game. The Freiburg doping practices were also a national concern – to this day.
“There is a lot of power involved and a university must not submit to this power. Absolutely not,” said Mahler. But the University of Freiburg did not succeed. “It’s about structures that have achieved the unspeakable and that have proven to be a hindrance to real enlightenment,” said Mahler, adding: “As far as I know, these structures have not been changed.”
Politics was obsessed with medals – before reunification but also afterwards. In a sports talk, criminologist Paoli recalls that the former Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière (CDU), called for a third more medals in top-class sport in 2015.
Criticism of the performance concept of the IOC
“Things are also going wrong” at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), criticizes Paoli. The motto of the IOC is: faster, higher, stronger, together. “The motto stands for a one-sided, performance-oriented understanding of sporting activities.”
The IOC itself is thus a main driver of the prohibited, performance-enhancing measures. “They only think about maximizing performance. This philosophy also influences the work of national sports associations and national politics. They still see the most successful possible participation in the Olympic Games as a legitimate declared goal for financial support of sport,” criticizes Paoli further. “They don’t think about the circumstances, about the pressure they then pass on to their athletes.”