In the Cold War era, sport was not just a symbol of the power and strength of a nation-state, but of certain ideological systems of politics. With the pressure for athletes to succeed at its zenith, many East German athletes were given anabolic steroids by their country’s own sport federation. While doping in East Germany has been intensely researched in the past decades, the state of West German athletics during this time has remained largely a mystery. In fact, doping was a common practice on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But how many athletes were involved? And who knew about these practices? In order to answer these questions, the Federal Institute for Sport Science in Germany supported a research project to shed light on the other, West German side of doping history. Based on analyses of authentic documents and archives, German Sports, Doping and Politics: A History of Performance Enhancement is a unique study spanning from 1950-2007. Translated from its original German, and supplemented with new material written especially for an international audience, this innovative book addresses many important questions about a topic with worldwide implications. Part I deals with the history of doping in the post-war period of the 1950s and ‘60s; Part II focuses on the apex of doping, as well as the beginnings of the anti-doping movement; and Part III considers the development of doping since the Reunification and the foundation of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the National Anti-Doping Agency in Germany. Written for a global audience, German Sports, Doping, and Politics explains and reveals the truly remarkable processes of doping and anti-doping that have evolved since the Cold War. While sports historians will find this book of great interest, it is also a significant study for anyone who wants to look beyond the surface of sports and doping as reported by the media.

Steven Ungerleider's Faust's Gold is the stunning expose of the East German sports juggernaut of the 1970s and 1980s that forced young athletes to unknowingly take steroids. 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 health was 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 colleagues in 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.

Based on original Stasi and Communist Party archival sources, this book uncovers why East Germany was for two decades running one of the most successful nations in the Summer and Winter Olympics, exploring how the central elite sports system was beset by internal tensions and disputes.

Across the modern political spectrum, left-wing and right-wing political theorists have invested sport with ideological significance. That significance, however, varies distinctively and characteristically with the ideology—a phenomenon John Hoberman terms "ideological differentiation." Taking this phenomenon as its point of departure, this provocative work interprets the major sport ideologies of the twentieth century as distinct expressions of political doctrine. Hoberman argues that a political ideology's interpretation of sport is shaped in part by the value it assigns to work and play as modes of experience; the political anthropologies of right and left can be distinguished by examining their resistance to—or affinity for—sportive imagery of their leaders and of the state itself; there exists a fascist temperament that shows an affinity to athleticism and the sphere of the body that is not shared by the left. Tracing modern sport ideology back to its premodern antecedents, Hoberman examines the interpretations of sport that have been promulgated by European political intellectuals, such as cultural conservatives and contemporary neo-Marxists, and by the official ideologists of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and China before and after Mao. As a form of mass theater, sport can advertise any ideology. But the deeper relationship between sport and political ideology has never before been explored wth such vigor. Presenting the first general theory of sport and political ideology to appear in any language, Hoberman's groundbreaking work is a unique and invaluable contribution to the intellectual and political history of sport in the twentieth century.

This book provides the first detailed history of one of the most powerful international sport organisations, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), since 2019 known as World Athletics. The book critically assesses the internal power relations within the IAAF by focusing on the IAAF leadership. Based on extensive archival research, Power and Politics in World Athletics offers a nuanced analysis of the institutionalised strategies that developed as a reflection of the IAAF’s interests and aims to create a broader understanding of the global sport system. With only six presidents in over a century of existence, the IAAF’s leaders had profound impacts on other international institutions, national stakeholders and sporting participants. Through four sections, the book identifies various key turning points in the history of the governing body of athletics, and explores the IAAF’s foundation, the policies of past IAAF presidents, and controversial issues such as doping, corruption and manipulation through a socio-historical lens. The book shows that while anyone could take part in athletics, policies enacted by each president served to ostracize those groups who did not fit into the IAAF’s vision of an equal playing field. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in sport history, sport sociology, the politics of sport, sport management, sport governance, or international organisations.

This book is an examination of the failure to control the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs in international sport. It will help you understand the universal issues involved in enforcing and controlling this ever-growing problem.

In her extraordinary swimming career, Shirley Babashoff set thirty-nine national records and eleven world records. Prior to the 1990s, she was the most successful U.S. female Olympian and, in her prime, was widely considered to be the greatest female swimmer in the world. Heading into the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Babashoff was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and followed closely by the media. Hopes were high that she would become “the female Mark Spitz.” All of that changed once Babashoff questioned the shocking masculinity of the swimmers on the East German women’s team. Once celebrated as America’s golden girl, Babashoff was accused of poor sportsmanship and vilified by the press with a new nickname: “Surly Shirley.” Making Waves displays the remarkable strength and resilience that made Babashoff such a dynamic champion. From her difficult childhood and beginnings as a determined young athlete growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, through her triumphs as the greatest female amateur swimmer in the world, Babashoff tells her story in the same unflinching manner that made her both the most dominant female swimmer of her time and one of the most controversial athletes in Olympic history.