Four former East German swimming coaches have been charged with giving banned anabolic drugs to minors without telling either them or their parents, Berlin prosecutors said yesterday. The quartet were among 10 trainers and three doctors employed by former East German swimming club SC Dymano Berlin, which had been under investigation.
They were identified only as Rolf G, Volker F, Dieter L and Dieter K. and were said to have given the drugs between 1974 and 1989 with the agreement of the East German sporting authorities.
The German Swimming Federation (DSV) said last week that two trainers, Dieter Lindemann and Volker Frischke, were likely to be the first in a series of former East German trainers to face charges of doping minors.
Former East German swimmer Joerg Hoffmann, who won the 400 and 1,500 metres freestyle world titles for the newly-unified Germany in 1991 in Perth, has admitted that he was given pills containing the banned anabolic Oral-Turinabol in 1988.
Hoffmann, a member of the German team at the European championships in Seville last August, said he had little choice but to take the pills.
"There was always a political officer standing by," he said. "If I had been the only one in the team to say `I'm not taking this' they would have thrown me out."
Meanwhile, the former East German head coach Ekkart Arbeit, whose recent appointment as Australia's athletics coach has caused an uproar in that country, moved out of his Berlin home yesterday to escape media pressure.
"It's crazy," Arbeit said while leaving with his family for an unknown destination. "I need calm and I have to be careful."
