German drug czar sentenced

A former East German official who was given a suspended prison sentence yesterday for wrecking the health of young athletes by giving them performance-enhancing drugs, made a political career out of sport.

Manfred Ewald (74) was given a 22-month suspended prison sentence for presiding over the systematic administration of hormones to drive the athletes, mostly young girls, to victory in international competition. Some changed sexual characteristics as a result of the treatment. In later life some of them suffered serious disorders of the liver, kidney and heart or developed cancer.

Ewald, who headed the East German sports confederation from 1963 to 1988, was also a central committee member of the Socialist Unity (SED) party which ruled East Germany, and a member of the East German parliament, as well as head of the country's Olympic committee.

Under Ewald, the East German state, with a population of just 17 million people, won 197 Olympic gold medals, 178 silver and 167 bronze.

Always victorious over its West German rival, East Germany even managed to outclass the United States twice, coming second in the league of 1976 Olympic medallists at Montreal and then again at Seoul in 1988, behind the Soviet Union.

Ewald had been a member of the Hitler Youth organisation and then the National Socialist (Nazi) party under the Third Reich. After the war he rose rapidly in the ranks of the SED.

From 1948 he was secretary of a German sports committee, working to build up a sports administration in the part of the country occupied by the Russians. He was named head of the national committee for physical culture and sport in 1952.

Described as a "sports dictator" for his megalomaniac tendencies, he was promoted in 1963 to the top position of president of the East German sports confederation, which he held until 1988.

At the same time, and in pursuit of the regime's ambition of seeing sporting successes testify to the supposedly superior communist system, he also headed the national Olympic committee.

Regarded as a devoted executive of the East German supreme leader Erich Honecker, he had a successful political career. He was elected a central committee member of the SED in 1963 and was a member of the East German parliament until the very last days of the regime.

The deputy director of the East German sports medicine service, Manfred Hoeppner (66), was given an 18-month suspended sentence. Ewald had denied the charge and refused to testify, but Hoeppner, who was also an alleged collaborator of the East German secret police, the Stasi, admitted his part in the covert doping from the start of the trial.