Faust's Gold: Inside The East German Doping Machine

By Steven Ungerleider

Book Overview

For nearly twenty-five years, East Germany's corrupt sports organization dominated international athletics. While the German Democratic Republic's secret "State Plan" was in effect, more than ten thousand unsuspecting young athletes - some as young as twelve years old - were given massive doses of performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. These athletes achieved miraculous success in international competitions, including the Olympics, but for many of them, their physical and emotional healthwas permanently damaged. Faust's Gold draws on the revelations of the ongoing trials of former GDR coaches, doctors, and sports officials who have now confessed to conducting ruthless medical experiments on young and talented athletes selected for Olympic training camps. It also draws on the extensive research of Brigitte Berendonk, who escaped from East Germany to begin a decade-long crusade to bring justice to her fellow athletes, and that of her husband, Professor Werner Franke. Berendonk's story, and those of her colleaguesin the GDR, offers a unique insight into a bizarre regime. Faust's Gold is a true-life detective story that plunges into the dark, secretive world of the GDR doping scam, where elite competitors and their families are up against a formidable opponent: the East German secret police, known as the STASI. What emerges is a complex tapestry of the politicized modern Olympics that culminates in a powerful testimony to the massive wrong done by one Eastern Bloc nation to its world-class athletes.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312269773
• ISBN13: 9780312269777
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Chocking

After reading this book I was stunned over the extent and how deliberate the East German doping program really was. Anyone who is interested in sports or history should read Faust's Gold. The author did a phenomenal job in researching and digging through court documents, STASI files and in disclosing the full story of what happened behind the iron curtain in a country obsessed with winning.

Faust's Gold

Steven ungerleider has done an extrordinary job of researching a period of time during which drug abuse and cheating in international sport was unbelieved by sport officials, scientist and doctors through out the world (except those in East Germany and Russia). A small country of 17 million people conned the world into believing that there social-economic system could create superior athletes. Many of us, including the author suspected that drugs had to be part of their success. Olympic medals still hang in the halls and are tainted by this episode in sport history. Those that don't seem to appreciate, the problem of drug abuse, and don't lend support for the Olympic effort to rid this scurge on athleticism, will live to see history repeat itself. the shame is the fact that thousand of young developing athletes, emulating and looking up to those athletes will not be able to resist the temptation of drug use, if we continue to allow whatever it takes to win. And, medical consequences in the future will result. Thus far drug abuse abounds at all levels of sport. This book should be read and lauded as a reminder not to let drug abuse continue.Rober O. Voy, M.DAuthor - Drugs, Sport, and Politics (Leisure Press 1991)

Faust's Gold: a must read

As a physician whose contact with competitive sports is limited to that of a spectator, I read this book with only a vague notion of the doping of athletes and the use of performance-enhancing drugs. I considered these activities as a minor and peripheral part of the Olympic games, believing that the IOC could and did expose them before they might influence the outcome. "Faust's Gold" shattered my naivete about the glory of international sports competition and revealed an unremovable stain on my otherwise noble profession by a few despicable East German doctors. Perhaps other readers were aware; I wasn't, and I wish everyone else will read this book before watching the next Olympics. I admire Ungerleider's ability to treat a politically and emotionally charged subject in a scholarly manner while keeping the reader riveted from beginning to end. A must read.

Riveting and Shocking

It is a masterful blend of high scholarship, investigative journalism, and riveting storytelling by the preeminent sports psychologist. I was spellbound and very disturbed by the personal tragedy, political intrigue, and corruption of the Olympic spirit running through this brilliant account of an astonishing sports scandal lasting decades and involving high officials of the East German government. After reading it, the reader's view of Olympic competition, or any other top-line sports competition, will never be the same.

Steroids and East Germany's Sports System

Steven Ungerleider has brought the story of East Germany's state organized sports doping to the US. In under 200 pages one can understand the dark side of anabolic steroid abuse used to glorify East Germany's politically driven win at all costs attitude. This account foucuses mainly on the DDR female swim program and the trials recently held in Berlin to bring justice to those who suffered severe side effects resulting from the steroids they were given while training for Olympic glory.This book a narrative which makes the consequences of steroid abuse and the DDR regime understandable and personal to most any reader. This is not a scholarly text heavy with references though the information appears to be accurate and eagerly pursued. It is good that this story has made it to the USA so that individually our coaches and athletes can look at their own practices some of which are equally horrific. There is a price for gaining medals at any cost and this book describes just that. Ex-athletes who have died or suffered tumors, deformities, liver damage and had children with major birth defects...Everyone should know of this system, the good, the bad and the ugly and we all should consider it as sport moves onward. This book will not give detailed insight into the DDR sport system as it focuses on the doping but one can certainly gain an appreciation for the harm that the doping has caused to athletes, athletes who suffered and still suffer due to the state program.An excellent book that could be a great topic of classroom debate on sport ethics and training.