West Germany Engaged in Sports Doping in 1970s, Study Says When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, so did the secrecy around a pervasive, state-sponsored system of doping in communist East Germany known by the Orwellian euphemism of "Supporting Means." More than two decades later, a newly published study has revealed that West Germany also began engaging in a government-financed plan in the 1970s to boost athletic achievement through the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. Although the West German government did not run its program top-down as in East Germany, the study indicated the West Germans engaged in systematic doping. It described experimentation with steroids on boys as young as 11, along with such odd and dubious methods as trying to enhance buoyancy in swimmers by injecting air into their colons. The German revelations were the latest in a cascading series of international doping scandals from the repudiation of Lance Armstrong to the suspension of 14 Major League Baseball players; the positive tests of sprinters from the United States and Jamaica; the supplying of drugs by crime gangs in Australia; and the barring of 31 track and field athletes in Turkey and 52 in India. These scandals have produced a whipsawing effect. Some sports officials feel encouraged and express more resolve to curtail the use of prohibited substances, while some scientists and academics wonder whether policing can ever be done effectively under the current structure of sport. "I think it's a watershed moment for clean athletes," said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Speaking of the baseball suspensions, he said, "It gives hope to millions who want to do it the right way. The right way has been supported and validated. Others view the German, baseball and track scandals as a crisis of the legitimacy of elite sport. "Even with all the testing, it's like we're moving two steps forward and five steps back," said Steven Ungerleider, an American sports psychologist and author of "Faust's Gold," a book that described the East German doping system. I don't think we're going to win this war. The more we look into this, we're going to see clusters of doping around the globe. We're going to see that in every country. Nobody should be surprised. The study of West German sport, from shortly after World War II through the cold war and into the present in a reunified nation, focused on the doping activities of the Federal Institute of Sports Science, created in 1970 under the jurisdiction of West Germany's Interior Ministry. The sports institute financed studies of steroids, testosterone, estrogen, growth hormones, insulin and blood boosters like EPO to establish "systemic doping under the guise of basic research," concluded the study by researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Münster. West Germany won far fewer Olympic medals than East Germany between 1968 and 1988 when the countries competed separately. But West Germany had similar ambitions, the study noted. The involvement of coaches, sports doctors and officials in the doping program suggested that a "subtle approximation" of the East German doping system "was unmistakable." Doping in West Germany became evident as soon as it was formed in 1949, the study said. It described soccer players taking stimulants known as "fighter pilot chocolate" that had been used by the military during World War II. This was an apparent reference to a methamphetamine called Pervitin. The study said Pervitin was given to players as Germany won the 1954 World Cup. And it included a letter from a FIFA medical official saying that traces of the stimulant ephedrine had been found in three unnamed West German players as the team finished second at the 1966 World Cup. Werner Franke, a molecular biologist from western Germany who with his wife uncovered documents exposing the state-sponsored East German system, said that West Germany escalated its own doping program out of competitive ego, including sibling rivalry. West Germany hosted the 1972 Munich Olympics, but won 40 medals compared to 66 for East Germany. At the 1976 Montreal Games, the gap widened to 90 for East Germany and 39 for West Germany. "They wanted medals, very simply," Franke said in a telephone interview. The government likes it when Germans are successful. The release of the study has prompted calls in Germany for a national antidoping law with teeth. Thomas Bach, the head of the German Olympic Committee who is seeking to become the next president of the International Olympic Committee, said that Germany remained determined to gain full knowledge of its doping past and to learn lessons for the future. "This will strengthen our zero tolerance policy against doping," Bach said in a statement. But the West German study was published days after an anguished Australian study conducted at the University of Adelaide. That study said the only way to catch everyone who dopes is to test each athlete in the world 50 times a year at a prohibitive cost. "It appears that anti-doping policies are in place more for perception, to show that the right thing is being done," the study's co-author, Maciej Henneberg, said in a statement. In practice, "the anti-doping system is doomed to fail." Doug Logan, a former chief executive of USA Track & Field, has advocated surrendering what he called an unwinnable fight against performance-enhancing drugs. "Let's stop making a morality play out of the issue," Logan wrote on Speedendurance.com. That is not a position, however, taken by many who hold power in world sport. Short of allowing doping, what should be done, given that that many of the world's elite athletes clearly see little incentive to stop using banned substances? The answer is another question, said John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and an expert on doping. That question is: What is sport for? Is it for perpetuating the current celebrity and entertainment culture? Or is it for making victory less important than the good of sport? If the answer is the latter, maybe it is possible to begin changing the culture slowly, Hoberman said, as cycling seems to be doing after imploding over doping. "That, these days, is asking a very great deal," Hoberman said. But if you don't ask a very great deal, you are not going to get a very great deal. What you are going to get is more scandal.