Sitting in the headquarters of the East German Sports Federation, listening to a high muckety-muck drone the party line, my mind was wandering. ”We have no secrets,” Werner Turke was saying through an interpreter, in answer to the fundamental question of how a country smaller than California can rival the United States and the Soviet Union on the world`s playing fields.
Turke got me thinking about the answer to another question two years before. It was something entirely different.
This was at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. It was after the medals had been awarded in women`s figure skating, and the Western press was finally getting its time with gold medalist Katarina Witt of East Germany.
Ah, Katarina. The closest thing East Germany had to a pin-up girl, and they knew it. Why else had they posed her as a vamp in the back of their propaganda magazine, Sports in the German Democratic Republic?
Here she was in a Sarajevo interview room, up close and personal:
lissome, auburn-haired, talented, drop-dead beautiful and surrounded by her friends in the shiny blue parkas with ”Press” stitched over the breast.
”Press,” we Western journalists assumed, simply translates to ”KGB” in the GDR, and these guys certainly looked the part.
We asked if Katarina might answer questions in English, which she speaks well. She agreed, as long as the questions were asked slowly. Her replies, all in English, were clear evidence she understood every word.
After 15 minutes of questions and answers about her skating, an American journalist asked Katarina if she knew she was being compared with the actress, Brooke Shields. Before she could answer, one of the boys in the blue parkas went over and whispered something in Witt`s ear.
Katarina answered in German.
They call East Germany the German Democratic Republic.
At least they got the German part right.
— — —
The trip began out of a desire to understand more about sports in East Germany, a country with a population shrinking toward 17 million and a position in international sports growing toward preeminence. I was interested in finding out how the East Germans had dealt with the aftermath of the 1984 Summer Olympic boycott by the Soviet-bloc countries, to see where its sports programs were going as the 21st Century approaches, and particularly, to interview Witt in advance of her attempt to win a third straight world championship.
A proposal asking for the chance to see for myself was made in a letter sent to the East German Embassy in Washington on Sept. 13, 1985. The letter asked for permission to visit East Germany in February. There followed weeks of phone calls, all answered with, ”Your request has been forwarded to East Berlin.”
I had told the embassy I would be leaving for Europe on Jan. 15, 1986. It was Jan. 31 when the embassy called, finding me at home only because the departure was postponed by the Bears` making the Super Bowl. The request had been approved. I was to call East Berlin the following week for details.
After four days of phone calls from Brussels, the details were provided. I was expected in East Berlin the following day. And Katarina Witt might not be available.
Where was Werner Turke when I needed him?
FRIDAY
A crow would fly from Brussels to East Berlin by going straight east, across the breadth of West Germany. Interflug, the East German airline, headed north toward Denmark, then east across the Ostsee and finally south to Berlin, doubling the length of the trip to avoid West German airspace.
There was, surprisingly, no official to meet me at the airport, quite a change from experiences in the Soviet Union, where Intourist guides were on hand for every move. I had been told to go to the International Press Center, where an interpreter and an official of the East German Sports Federation were waiting.
They told me I was late for an appointment with Turke that I had known nothing about until handed a carbon copy of the ”Programm `Chicago Tribune`
Philip F. Hersh.”
There was nothing on the Programm about Katarina Witt.
I protested the absence of this interview, claiming my boss would have me beheaded if I returned without it.
”We shall see,” said Thomas Fitzner of the sports federation`s press department.
The war of words had begun. It was clearly a mismatch, with a Westerner who spoke a few syllables of German matched against a communist bureaucracy on its own turf.
I had but a handful of days in East Germany. The next would be spent on a 300-kilometer drive south to Erfurt to see a district-level competition in speedskating. The rest of Friday`s Programm was devoted to check-in at the hotel. The closer I got to the home of Katarina Witt and the rest of the top athletes I wanted to see, the greater was the distance from them.
SATURDAY
The interpreter, an earnest young man named Anton who worried about his unfamiliarity with sports terminology, was waiting for me at the hotel at 8 a.m. on a cold, bleak morning. Snow started falling as we left East Berlin.
Anton found the British Broadcasting Corp. on the radio; the U.S. Armed Forces Network was also available. East Germany has chosen not to scramble those signals, either because it would interfere with its own broadcasts or because it has decided some Western TV and radio is a harmless sop for its people.
The traffic and the snow became heavier as we got farther south. It was the beginning of winter vacation, and many East Germans were headed the same way to cross-country ski. When and if they got there was another matter, since hundreds had to pull over to clean windshields by hand. The entire nation`s supply of windshield de-icer was apparently of inferior quality. It simply froze in the fluid lines at temperatures that were only slightly below 20 degrees. Ours was no exception.
We were due in Erfurt at noon. I was about to miss another appointment.
”You`re still seeing something of East German sports,” Anton said cheerfully, pointing to all the skis and wooden sleds on the roofs of cars stopped around us.
A three-hour trip became five before we made Erfurt, seat of a county with 1.25 million people, with one of the four speedskating ovals in East Germany. (The U.S. has one rink, at West Allis, Wis., which is always faced by threats of closing because of operating costs.) Speedskating is one of the sports in which East German women completely dominate international competition: They won all four gold medals, plus four silvers and a bronze, at the 1984 Olympics.
At the moment we arrived in Erfurt to watch a district-level Spartakiad competition, East Germany`s best women skaters were on their way to winning all four golds, three silvers and two bronzes at the 1986 World Championships in The Netherlands. Most of those top skaters train 100 kilometers from Erfurt in Karl-Marx-Stadt, but nearly all of them were first spotted at this lowest level of Spartakiad in their home districts.
The Spartakiad Children`s and Youth Games system, adopted from the Soviet Union and used as the model for the U.S. Olympic Festival, is the drive train of the East German sports machine. District competitions are held annually, national competitions every two years and a National Sports Festival every four years. The purpose of Erfurt`s district competition was to select 200 skaters of all age levels to move up to countywide competition.
”One of the essential reasons for the Spartakiad movement is to spot talent,” said Joorg Doojs, chief of the sports federation`s executive committee in Erfurt County.
Doojs was talking in a cafeteria next to the speedskating oval, part of the athletic complex that belongs to the Sporting Club Turbine of Erfurt. We would spend a lot of time in the cafeteria, eating knockwurst washed down with coffee and brandy. It was cold and snowy outside, where not much was happening. Maybe the East German officials were trying to make their visitor comfortable.
They were, after all, very solicitous of my wishes, always asking what I wanted. And then they shrugged and apologized that it was impossible because they hadn`t known about it in advance.
Take the matter of Roland Matthes, for instance. The great East German swimmer and his ex-wife, Kornelia Ender, had won 16 medals in three Olympic Games. Matthes was now a pediatrician in Erfurt . . . except he was out of town for the weekend.
As snow covered the ice, the competition was moved to the indoor skating rink, built two years ago to encourage figure skating in the Erfurt area. The children under 13 years old skated an obstacle course to determine flexibility and general capability. Knut-Michel Meisel, the former hockey player who coaches Erfurt speedskaters, stood beside timers and volunteer coaches along the rink boards.
”Many of our speedskating coaches, including national team coach Rainier Mund, come from hockey,” Meisel said. ”The next generation will all be former speedskaters.”
The amazing thing is that not even a generation has passed since the German Democratic Republic, founded in 1949, was first allowed in 1968 to participate as a separate entity from the Federal Republic of (West) Germany in the Olympics.
By 1972, East Germany had established itself as No. 2 to the Soviet Union in Winter Olympic medal counts, a position it has held ever since. In 1984, the East Germans won three more gold medals than any other nation.
There was a similar pattern in the Summer Olympics. By 1972, the East Germans were third to the Soviet Union and the U.S. in the overall medal count. In 1976, the last Summer Olympics not watered down by a major boycott, East Germany was third in overall medals but second in gold medals, mainly because its athletes won an astonishing 11 of 12 gold medals in women`s swimming.
They would likely have done even better at Los Angeles in 1984. The decision to boycott hurt less in the Soviet Union than it did in East Germany, where sports are the main vehicle for the country to show it is more than a Soviet puppet.
”Of course, it was not easy for our sportsmen, who had prepared so many years and then had the dream not fulfilled,” Doojs said. ”But you cannot say our sportsmen lost perspective or motivation. There is the next Olympic Games. And the best motivation, to be a representative of the socialist state, remains valid.”
By late afternoon, the snow had let up enough to allow the competition to continue outdoors. There was still time for Frank Richter, 15, to win the last of four Spartakiad gold medals that would be hung on his neck in ceremonies later that day.
”This doesn`t mean so much because there were not so many participants,” Richter said, through the interpreter. ”The county level will mean more.”
If a child like Richter were to show exceptional promise at a sport, he would be invited to leave home and move to one of the major training centers. That would put him in a favored position with rewards that grow according to success: better apartment, better car, better clothes, better job.
”All who achieve good results in sports are very recognized people in our society,” Doojs said. ”There is not an example of a sportsman who could not find a job or had no prospects for the future.”
Katarina Witt drives a Soviet-made sports car, wears French-made clothes and is a member of the Communist elite. So I have read, anyway. To see for myself, well . . . as Thomas Fitzner said, ”We shall see.”
SUNDAY
The Programm called for more of the same as yesterday, except not even Coach Meisel was available any longer. A brief trip to the speedskating oval made it clear nothing would be gained by staying in Erfurt. We decided to return to East Berlin, so Anton would be able to make his regular Sunday evening tennis match.
His opponent, it turned out, was sick. I volunteered to fill in. East beat West 6-1, 6-4.
I would like to say the reason was I had never before played tennis on the wooden floor of an unheated gymnasium that we opened after getting the keys from the custodian.
I would like to say the reason was it was nearly impossible to pick up the ball against the gray walls.
I would have to say Anton probably gave me a couple of games.
MONDAY
The East Germans pride themselves on mass participation in sports, even if facilities for indoor tennis are sorely lacking. Their showpiece is the Sports and Recreation Center in East Berlin, which looks like Chicago`s posh East Bank Club gone socialist. Needless to say, it was on my Programm.
This center has seven swimming pools, including one that makes waves; a main hall for volleyball, badminton and basketball; solariums; exercise rooms with the most sophisticated cycles; a skating rink; an adjacent city park full of recreational devices and jogging paths; lecture rooms. And on. And on. And on.
The center`s tour guide said some 4,000 to 7,000 people use the athletic facilities every day, and the same number come to watch or eat in one of the three restaurants. The entrance fee is 50 pfennig ($1.20) for adults and 20 pfennig for students and pensioners. The building was impressive, inviting and irrelevant to my erstwhile study of sports in the GDR.
What about sports medicine? I asked Herr Fitzner.
What about training methods?
What about Katarina?
All that, he assured me, I would learn in my postponed interview with Werner Turke at the headquarters of the East German Sports Federation.
It was not a showpiece.
The headquarters was as blandly ugly as the Sports and Recreation Center was attractive. Only a red banner across the middle lent any color to a gray warehouse of a building that could have been decorated in gold, silver and bronze.
Turke, Fitzner, Anton and I sat around a table in a spacious office. As press chief of the federation, Turke undoubtedly speaks English, but the interview was conducted in translation, which always gives an advantage to the interviewee. For the first time in my visit, Fitzner took notes of the German answers.
Q–Why do your women do so much better than your men?
A–In some sports, women develop more quickly.
Q–What advances have you made in sports medicine?
A–We are arranging a tour of our sports medicine facilities for journalists this summer, and we invite you to come.
Q–What are you doing to be ready for the next Olympics after not being able to participate in the last?
A–Our top winter sports athletes–for example, 10 women`s speedskaters
–will be identified by the end of this spring and then start training for 1988. Our summer sports athletes will be identified at the end of this summer. Q–How did you do so well, so fast?
A–We did not start from point zero. There were traditions in German sport. We try to keep to sports where we have good traditions. We cannot achieve everything.
Q–Why is there so much mystery surrounding your athletes and their training methods?
A–We have no secrets. There is no miracle, only concentrated work. That is the miracle.
Q–Why was Katarina Witt not available for even a brief interview?
A–She is training for the World Championships. I recall that your Evelyn Ashford (the runner) was not available for interviews before the Olympics.
Got me there, Werner. No further questions.
TUESDAY
The Programm called for me to attend the East German indoor Schwimmfest
–sort of a national championship, with the addition of invited athletes from 13 other Soviet-bloc nations, Western nations and the People`s Republic of China. At last, some elite athletes. And in the sport that gave this country its first international athletic prominence.
The last time East met West, in the 1982 swimming World Championships, East German women won 10 gold, seven silver and two bronze medals in 14 events, including two relays. Its men, beginning to make an impact, had two gold, one silver and one bronze. At the 1984 Olympics, without the East Germans, American women won 11 of 14 events and were second in eight others.
”The performances at the last Olympics didn`t impact on our top-level athletes,” said East German national team coach Wolfgang Richter. He didn`t even need to point out that East German women hold 11 of the 17 listed world records. Or that, in Kornelia Gressler, East Germany may have found a challenger to the presumably unassailable record in the 100-meter butterfly set by America`s Mary T. Meagher in 1981.
Gressler can stand as the exemplar of the East German system. Discovered at age 8 in the sports center of her hometown, Armstadt, she moved two years later to the training center at nearby Erfurt. By last summer, at age 14, she had won the 100-meter butterfly and finished second in the 200 meters at the European Championships.
At 5 feet 9 inches and 145 pounds, Gressler is more willowy than muscular, unlike those East German women whose bulging biceps led to speculation–some of it undoubtedly jealous–about steroid use. She will not turn 16 until five months after this August`s World Championships, in which she is expected to win a medal.
”Kornelia is so young,” Richter said, ”that in the future she will be able to achieve world-best times.”
”I am not so impatient,” Gressler said. ”If I do not win at the World Championships, I will be a little bit disappointed. But I have at least until 1988.”
EPILOGUE
In mid-March, Kornelia Gressler easily won the 100- and 200-meter butterfly races in the annual Soviet-East Germany meet.
A week later, Katarina Witt was upset by American Debi Thomas in the World Figure Skating Championships.
Upon returning to the United States, I received a $340 bill, presumably for the interpreter, from the International Press Center in East Berlin. It was all in German, except for unexplained numerical codes, with no
translation.
They have some secrets.
