A group of 20 former East German coaches say that nation's domination of women's international swimming over the past 20 years was aided by steroids, according to a published report.
"We confirm that anabolic steroids were used in former East German swimming," the coaches said in a statement published in Tuesday's editions of The New York Times. "Not all of us were involved in doping. The extent varied."The period included a time from the late 1960s to the late 1980s when the now-dissolved communist state ruled women's swimming with such stars as Kornelia Ender, Petra Schneider, Ute Geweniger, Barbara Krause and Ulrike Richter. The coaches' statement did not identify any of the swimmers who used steriods.
The admission by the coaches confirmed years of speculation that the East Germans were using steroids to enhance their performances.
"We knew it for years; we weren't stupid," said Sherm Chavoor, an American swimming coach from 1968 through 1980.
The statement in Bonn also seemed to confirm what Don Gambril, the swimming coach at the University of Alabama had known since early 1985, when Jens-Peter Berndt dedected and enrolled at Alabama.
"He talked to me in depth about what was going on," Gambril told the newspaper. "He couldn't speak out publicly about it at the time, because he thought his family back in East Germany would be hassled. But he spoke about it to me."
The coaches in Bonn said they decided to issue the statement to put an end to the speculation.
"We wanted to draw a final line under the affair so that the subject would not come up every time there were sports highlights," said Volker Frischke, a Berlin trainer.