Former East German sprinter - Ines Geipel
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2019
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Doped for decades, East German athletes are still searching for truth and justice. When the infamous Berlin Wall was breached 30 years ago, the darkest secrets of the East German police state were soon exposed. Among them was the systematic, coercive administration of performance-enhancing drugs to thousands of young athletes. It was meant to make them into world beaters, regardless of any damage to their health. Stephen Sackur talks to the former East German sprinter Ines Geipel about the abuse she and others were subjected to in what is now known as the East German doping scandal.
(Photo: Former East German sprinter Ines Geipel)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:03.8 | This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:06.6 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. |
| 0:09.3 | I do hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:11.6 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:15.8 | Today I'm in Berlin in this 30th anniversary year of the fall of the wall, which divided east from west, |
| 0:24.9 | to reflect on one of the dark secrets exposed by the collapse of the East German police state. |
| 0:32.1 | My guest is Ines Gaipel, born in East Germany in 1960. |
| 0:37.1 | She was a talented athlete who was invited into an elite |
| 0:41.1 | GDR training program. She became one of many unwitting victims of systematic state-sponsored |
| 0:48.8 | doping. It was a politically motivated effort to create a generation of athletic champions, |
| 0:56.0 | regardless of the damage done to the individuals involved. |
| 1:00.2 | Ms. Gipold's story is harrowing. |
| 1:02.3 | It says much about Germany's East-West divide and the difficulty of healing wounds in the three decades since unification. Why did she choose to speak out |
| 1:14.1 | when many others opted for silence? Well, Inez Geipel joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:23.0 | Let us go back to the beginning and tell me how you as a child, born in East Germany, your |
| 1:29.9 | family raised you in Dresden, how you as a girl became involved in the abuse of hormones, |
| 1:40.9 | the doping scandal in East Germany. |
| 1:49.1 | Today we talk about the doping scandal in East Germany. Today we talk about the doping scandal in East Germany. |
| 1:54.9 | At the time in the 1970s, when I started with a sport, the word doping didn't even exist. |
| 2:00.1 | To us I wear vitamins, and there was a story with legend within the GDR sport. Just to remind you, the GDR was a small, closed country. |
| 2:03.6 | It was a cage, so it was not at all difficult to engage young people |
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