”But,” said the DTSB`s Ranke, affecting more candor, ”we don`t want to disguise the emphasis on competitive sport.” That emphasis begins in the compulsory physical education classes at kindergartens and elementary schools, where teachers perform rudimentary physical aptitude tests and recommend that talented athletes attend one of the enterprise sports clubs. At the fishing combine`s club in Rostock, 5-year-old gymnasts train six hours weekly in three two-hour sessions. Two years later, they are practicing six days a week.
Thus begins a dedication that goes far beyond the love of sport. It becomes a job and a way of life for East German athletes, the prodigal children of their country. With no outlets in professional sports, the best athletes concentrate on the Olympics and world championships. A Dan Hampton in East Germany would be a weightlifter or a wrestler or a discus thrower, not an All-Pro defensive end making $775,000 a year.
Young athletes are encouraged to enter the Spartakiad Children`s and Youth Games, a national sports festival. After being discovered in the Spartakiads or enterprise sports clubs, some 2,000 athletes a year are
”invited” to attend one of the nation`s special sports schools, such as the Hermann Matern School, affiliated with SC Traktor. Each sports club has such a school, reflecting the close tie between the DTSB and the ministry of education. Such cooperation exists at all levels of East German sport.
Children generally go to the school closest to their home or the closest one specializing in their sport, but these are boarding schools, and some take children as young as 8 years old. The starting age depends on the discipline: gymnasts start at 8, figure skaters at 9 and athletes in most other sports at 13 or 14. Boarding students pay $20 a month, day students 70 cents a day. The state pays for the rest.
The school`s goal is simple, according to headmaster Wolfgang Remer: ”To train young people who can show top performance in sports and later on in their professions.”
There are 303 students, two-thirds of them boys, at Hermann Matern. Eighty-eight students enter the school annually, 22 in each of the four sports developed at SC Traktor.
Although the students do not wear uniforms, the atmosphere is that of a military school. The dining hall, where the student-athletes eat five meals a day, contains frequent exhortations to cleanliness. The hostel is plain if not Spartan.
Athletes, classed by sport, age and sex, live in narrow rooms. A few had
”Free Nelson Mandela” posters on the back of the door. Most had tapes of rock groups, including Foreigner. One had a copy of the book ”Vom Winde Verweht,” ”Gone with the Wind.” Movies being offered in June included
”Greystoke” and ”Beverly Hills Cop.”
The school year runs from Sept. 1 to July 1. Classes begin at 7 a.m. and end at 6, Monday through Saturday, with the 22 hours of weekly lessons interrupted by training that can last up to six hours daily. The courses are not unlike those offered in junior high schools or high schools in the West.
”The one subject we do not teach here is sport,” Remer said.
That is left for the coaches and scientists at SC Traktor, whose first task is testing to ensure that athletes are in a discipline suited to them. The East Germans have established size and strength parameters for certain sports, and athletes are measured against them. Thus, the East German national volleyball team looks like stick-figure clones of its top player, SC Traktor member Dorte Studemann, a willowy 5-foot-7-inch blond who is her country`s Miss Volleyball.
If those tests show a budding gymnast is better suited for rowing, he or she will be strongly urged to make the change. Official disclaimers that such switches are voluntary mean little, since a young athlete is unlikely to defy the system.
”There is remarkably little wastage of talent,” Ranke said.
At the 1976 Summer Games, East Germany won one medal for every three athletes, compared to one in four for the U.S. and USSR, one in seven for West Germany and one in 19 for Great Britain.
”We will send athletes who are capable of making the finals,” said Volker Kluge, press chief of the East German Olympic Committee. ”In principle, we are against sports tourism.”
The U.S. will send 601 athletes in medal sports to Seoul, the East Germans 284.
Lest it seem that their preocccupation with winning contradicts the Olympic ideal that stresses the value of participation, the East Germans point out they had a lunch party in Calgary for those few who did not win medals. At the same time, their government-controlled press was dismissing myopic British ski jumper Eddie Edwards (”the so-called Flying Eagle,” Ranke said), the last-place hero of the Winter Olympics, as an affront to the Games because of his relative lack of talent.
East German athletes in sports such as track and swimming must meet standards far higher than those mandated by the IOC to qualify for the Games. Older athletes continue competing until their replacement is ready.
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Schult stayed at the Hermann Matern School until the 10th grade, after which he switched to a vocational school for a course as a motor mechanic. That is a normal procession for 75 percent of the sports school`s students. The other 25 percent go on to take the Abitur, a college entrance exam.
Remer said 99 percent of the students finish, which means they get at least through the 10th grade. Those who do not improve in their sport are generally sent home for vocational training or advanced training.
One such advanced student, boxer Andy Jalless, was called ”Lonesome Andy” by the visiting reporters. They met Jalless while he was sitting alone in a classroom where every other chair was stacked.
Jalless, the only student remaining at Hermann Matern from an entering 7th-grade group of more than 20 boxers, was working out algebra problems on a blackboard. He takes all his classes alone.
”It is a little difficult for me,” he admitted. ”Sometimes the teachers look in, but mostly they put the lessons on the blackboard, and I copy them. I like it because it gives me the chance to work more intensely.” Such sacrifice has its rewards. Athletes are a special class in the allegedly classless East German society. As long as they toe the party line, their life after sport will be comfortably guaranteed.
”Certainly we enjoy certain privileges,” Schult said. ”There are, for instance, long waiting lists for private cars and apartments, but if we have good performances, they are shortened for us.”
Schult, married with a young son, drives an East German-made Trabant station wagon that seems far too small for his 6-4, 245-pound body. He also has an apartment of his own, a luxury in a country unlikely to meet the 1990 goal of providing every family with an apartment where each person has a room to himself.
His job is sport, for which Schult is paid $650 a month, what he would be making as a motor mechanic. His wife is a bookkeeper in a supermarket. He said he gets only $15 a day and none of the winnings when competing on the Grand Prix circuit. He denied that the car and apartment are free, even though a Trabant costs nearly a year`s salary.
”Any appearance fees I get go to the sports federation,” he said.
”That is justified, because I do not pay to practice my sport.”
Schult intends to compete at least through the 1992 Olympics, when he will be 32. He may be asked to go on longer if an adequate replacement has not emerged, like a monster, from the very foundations of a sports system refined in the College for Physical Education.
In the meantime, he is taking correspondence courses to be a coach, which makes Schult a student at the college. The college`s enrollment is 2,000, half at Leipzig and half at its eight branches and six ”consultation points.”
The student body includes some 100 foreigners a year, mainly from African countries. No Westerners have ever studied there.
For East German students, the four-year course of study leads to a degree as physical-education teachers and jobs at kindergartens, elementary schools, elite sports clubs and some of the enterprise sports clubs.
The school operates with a $22 million annual budget from the state. Tuition is subsidized completely: Students are actually paid to attend, with bonuses for good grades.
Whether such a commitment to sport is morally defensible depends on perspective. The East Germans say their annual budget of $660 million for elite and mass sport-an ill-defined statistic that cannot be verified-represents less than 1 percent of the national budget in a country in which only 37 percent of the homes have refrigerators, only 33 percent of families have cars and less than that have telephones.
The East Germans` Olympic participation would be even greater, they say, were it not for cost. They are desperate for hard currency, which is why they allowed two-time Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt to sign a multimillion-dollar pro contract, most of which will go to the DTSB.
The East Germans troll for Western currency shamelessly. One ploy could be called dialing for dollars: A visiting journalist paid $300 for a 30-minute call back to the States.
Other funds are raised internally by purchase of souvenirs, proceeds of which go to Olympic preparation. Ranke cited those sales as proof the East German public supports the investment in sport. Dissent is, of course, not openly voiced; glasnost remains slow to penetrate the Berlin Wall.
”Many of our people look at West Germany,” said an East German official. ”Their shops are full. Their cars are better. Our Trabant, that is not a car. We can identify very little.
”But in sports, people talk East Germany. In sports, we are in the headlines. That is a very good feeling.”
