Where does the “Walk of Sport” lead in Neubrandenburg? In the heart of the four-gate city, one could tell the story by looking at the stones in the sidewalk and the bronze plates for famous and less famous athletes. In ancient times, others claim. André Rohloff is one of them. Not that he fundamentally rejects the “Walk of Sport”. Honor where honor is due. He is offended by the selection.
There are former dopers among them, including an unofficial Stasi employee. In the spring he tried to point out the blatant contradiction with letters to the editor. “How can you present dopers and Stasi employees as role models?” asks Rohloff, state chairman of the Association of Victims of Stalinism (VOS) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, rhetorically. Vain. On December 11th, the city council extended the “Walk of Sport” with a large majority. In the spring, memorial plaques honoring former sprinters Katrin Krabbe and Grit Breuer will be sunk into the sidewalk.
The CDUplus parliamentary group has expanded this formulation. This time she answered the FAZ’s questions. Others who approved the honor request failed to even respond within four days. The CDUplus parliamentary group writes: “Katrin Krabbe and Grit Breuer should therefore be part of the Walk of Sport not despite, but also because of the breaks in their biographies.” Breaks in their biographies?
Katrin Krabbe: fast, successful, beautiful
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Flashback: The two were among the fastest sprinters, Krabbe over the short distances, Breuer over 400 meters. The Wall had just fallen and the GDR had joined the Federal Republic. Katrin Krabbe was considered the face of the association’s sport: fast, successful, beautiful; European champion, world champion over one hundred and two hundred meters. In her mind, she already had a medal from the 1992 Summer Games hanging around her neck.
The CDUplus parliamentary group wants the honor because “both athletes are among the most successful athletes that Neubrandenburg has produced. Their international titles and medals have made the city known worldwide over the years and are part of Neubrandenburg’s sports history.” Even if the SPD, the Greens and the Left remained silent, this reasoning can be attributed to them. That’s what it says in the application, it’s about titles and medals. There is no reference to the “breaks in the biographies”.
Here’s the short version: The training group Krabbe, Breuer & Co. attracted attention in 1991 with a short-term change of quarters. At that time there was no global (still porous) control network. German sport had rather reluctantly decided on training controls (to a comparatively ridiculous extent) two years earlier. Analyzes of urine samples from the training group revealed an astonishing finding. All identical, even though the women had given different ovulation inhibitors.
Condoms filled with someone else’s urine were slit open
However, the anti-doping faction in Germany did not want to know anything about a scientific sensation – until now identical urines were unknown. She stated: foreign urine from a single person. Like that? Shrugging of the shoulders by those affected, ignorance and, after the initial outcry, sports rulings in their favor.
The suspension was lifted in spring 1992: Because it could not be ruled out that third parties had manipulated the samples. What was or should have been ignored when conspiracy theories were involved: The analysts referred to several identical urine samples from the training group at different times. It later became known that other athletes used a perfidious method to conceal manipulations. During the check, they slit open inserted condoms that were previously filled with someone else’s urine. At that time, doping controls were announced one day in advance.
Traces of the calf fattening agent Clenbuterol
German anti-doping campaigners believed they could feel confirmed when a few months later a positive result hit the training group and shook athletics worldwide: critics considered traces of Clenbuterol, a calf fattening agent, to be proof. But the substance, widespread in the doping scene, was not on the anti-doping list of the German Athletics Association (DLV).
Krabbe and Breuer, among others, were banned for a year because of “drug abuse”. The world association extended it to three years. While Breuer accepted, Katrin Krabbe – who had retired from competitive sports – fought against the extension and sued her way through the courts. She won. She was awarded damages of 1.2 million German marks.
Dark sides of GDR competitive sports
The CDUplus faction, she writes to the FAZ, is “aware that these biographies cannot be viewed separately from the dark sides of GDR competitive sports and the doping cases that later became known. These aspects are part of the historical truth and must neither be concealed nor trivialized.”
But this part of the vita does not stand in the way of a memorial stone in the “Walk of Sport”: “In our view, an honor does not mean uncritical glorification, but rather a conscious and differentiated examination of sporting achievements and their historical framework.”
The “Walk of Sport” is “explicitly not intended to be a place of transfiguration, but rather a place of remembrance and classification.” How to inform the interested citizen? With an information and media column on the “Walk of Sport” a “critical contextualization” is carried out, says the CDUplus parliamentary group’s answer. This creates transparency and enables a contemporary culture of remembrance. The history of the training group on a pillar?
So far, Krabbe and Breuer’s explanations have not taken up much space. In all these years, more than one regret about taking a drug without a prescription, as Krabbe told NDR, has not been heard. That was a mistake. At the same time, the CDUplus parliamentary group states that “talking openly about mistakes, responsibility and consequences” fulfills the requirement of being a role model in a new, reflected form.
“NADA is critical of the honor”
Others cannot recognize any role model function. These include experts who work around the clock in the fight against doping, such as the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA): “NADA is critical of the honor,” she wrote to the FAZ: “It sends the wrong signal – especially from a preventive perspective.” Because what should young athletes learn? That Katrin Krabbe, as she essentially says, worked hard and therefore deserves the award?
The President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation cannot understand the honor: “Athletes act as role models in society, especially for children and young people; they stand for values such as fairness and respect,” said Thomas Weikert when asked: “Of course, every person deserves a second chance after a misbehavior such as a doping offense, but exemplary behavior in the interests of sport and society cannot be seen here.”
The DOSB President will hardly prevent the extension of the “Walk of Sport”. Maybe not the next step either. A tribute to someone who is inextricably linked to the story of Katrin Krabbe and Grit Breuer: Coach Thomas Springstein led the training group with his future wife Grit Breuer from the GDR with their secret forced doping, as was also practiced at SC Neubrandenburg, to unified Germany. In 2006, a regular court sentenced him to a suspended sentence of 16 months for doping a minor.
