Bernd Pansold

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Bernd Pansold (born April 3, 1942 in Zwickau ) is a German sports doctor . From 1968 to 1990 he was a sports doctor at SC Dynamo Berlin and from 1971 an unofficial employee (IM) of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) under the code name "Jürgen Wendt". After German reunification , Pansold worked for an Austrian competitive sports center in Obertauern as a medical supervisor for professional winter sports enthusiasts. In 1998, Pansold was fined nine cases before the Berlin Regional Court for state-ordered doping of minors, whereupon the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) obtained his dismissal. Since 2003 Pansold has been working for the Austrian company Red Bull as the head of the company's own diagnostics and training center, which looks after professional athletes sponsored by Red Bull.

Activity in the GDR

Pansold joined the Stasi-sponsored sports club SC Dynamo Berlin in 1968 and was promoted to deputy division manager (performance medicine) just four years later. In 1977 he gained at the University of Greifswald with the work performance Physiological studies with special reference to the information content of lactate concentration in the blood of athletes the sport of swimming the Promotion A 1985 followed due to a dissertation entitled findings to complex performance evaluation taking into account the specificity of the test procedure at selected groups and subjects of competitive athletes awarding the doctorate B . In 1982 Pansold became head of Dynamo Sports Medicine. In his functions he was responsible for various doping practices. As early as 1975, he was responsible for issuing prescriptions for doping substances to the appropriate doctors who were subordinate to him. The former GDR swimming professional who was affected by the practices and today's sports journalist Raik Hannemann later described: “He was the chief methodologist at Dynamo, not only for swimming, but also for other sports, specifically in terms of doping. Dynamo was subordinate to the police and the state security service. His instructions to the subordinate doctors with a lower rank than himself were of a military nature. For me he is the main culprit for doping in Berlin sports, especially at Dynamo. "

As formerly secret Stasi documents and testimony from and about Pansold show, he was also involved in the development of the state doping program in GDR competitive sports by GDR doctors and sports officials from the early 1970s . The use of anabolic steroids with Pansold's participation is documented as well as his active participation in the research group “Additional Performance Reserve” at the Research Institute for Physical Culture and Sport (FKS) in 1975, which among other things worked on optimizing anabolic doping. In the same year, Pansold himself reported in one of his IM reports on “widespread use of anabolic steroids among participants in the Central Children's and Youth Spartakiad”. There are various other mostly handwritten reports on training and competition doping at World Championships and Olympic Games, including the male sex hormone testosterone and amphetamines such as Pervitin, which is produced by VEB Jenapharm on behalf of the state and also administered to young women . At some points in the IM reports, Pansold indicated that those involved were aware that their activities were negligent, “criminal offenses” and warned of possible long-term health effects that were “already beginning to be recognized” .

As part of the processing of state doping in the GDR and various lawsuits from affected athletes, who at that time were mostly subjected to appropriate treatments without their knowledge, Bernd Pansold was one of six defendants in a trial before the 34th criminal chamber of the Berlin Regional Court for “aiding and abetting bodily harm to minors ". In contrast to other defendants, Pansold was silent about the allegations made against him before and during the trial. The chamber finally saw it as proven that he was responsible “in the dynamo area for controlling the allocation of virilizing, highly harmful anabolic steroids to underage swimmers” and emphasized that no extenuating circumstances could be identified. Pansold was sentenced to a four-digit fine. His request for a revision was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice in February 2000.

Activity in Austria

Performance center Obertauern

After the fall of the Wall, Pansold, like some other of his former colleagues, moved to Austria, which was soon considered a "refuge for GDR doping doctors". There he opened a practice in Vienna and was also employed by a privately operated, but federally and state-sponsored competitive sports center based on the model of German Olympic training centers in Obertauern . There Pansold, who soon acquired the reputation of an outstanding performance diagnostician, looked after various well-known Austrian top winter athletes . The Austrian alpine ski star Hermann Maier also regularly visited this performance center. Doping allegations against Maier in the year of his sporting breakthrough in 1998 by competitors and the media were also raised with reference to a possible collaboration between Maier and Pansold. However, Maier denied having had direct contact with him. The subsequent broad discussion of Pansold's doping past in the Austrian media, which was intensified by the ongoing criminal proceedings against him in Germany, severely exposed athletes and officials of Austrian winter sports who were said to have worked closely with Pansold, at least unofficially Pressure. The ÖSV President Peter Schröcksnadel publicly denied that the association had ever worked with Pansold. In 1998 the ÖSV made an already planned participation in the Obertauern performance center dependent on Pansold's resignation, which then took place immediately. However, the media accused the ÖSV of only becoming active after public pressure had been built up.

Red Bull performance center in Thalgau

After Pansold had initially continued to work in his practice in Vienna and was invited as a highly respected specialist to conferences and lectures in which he claimed, among other things, that the potential of competitive athletes was "at best 50 percent today", he was hired in 2003 by the Austrian shower manufacturer Red Bull , whose founder and owner Dietrich Mateschitz had started to sponsor top athletes and clubs on a large scale. Pansold became head of a proprietary "Diagnostic and Training Center" open to all athletes sponsored by Red Bull. When asked critically about his attitude, the company stated that Pansold was “one of the world's leading performance diagnosticians and sports medicine specialists. Dr. In medical circles and among our athletes, Pansold is undisputed in its integrity and correctness. ”Pansold himself stated that doping was“ old cheese from the Cold War ”, and Mateschitz also found Pansold's GDR past to be“ yesterday's news ”.

However, since Red Bull's collaboration with Pansold became known, the company has been criticized time and again. The Tagesspiegel, for example, accused the company in 2011 of being closed to Pansold's past and his current work and of creating the feeling that one does not want to allow any peek “behind the facade”. The Süddeutsche Zeitung judged after a meeting of journalists with Pansold in Thalgau , who had responded negatively to questions about his past, that “there are former GDR athletes who are sick today or have disabled children and who are on the pills from back then. You can hardly blame them for finding it cynical when a Pansold continues to do his doctorate so happily. "

It is considered noticeable that numerous well-known athletes who are examined, advised and treated to varying degrees in the diagnostic and training center, including the German sports stars Maria Riesch and Sebastian Vettel , a collaboration with the head of the facility, Pansold, each explicitly deny. In the American media, a possible collaboration between Red Bull-sponsored alpine skier Lindsey Vonn and Pansold is a recurring topic.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DNB 931700892
  2. ↑ DNB 942124944
  3. ^ Giselher Spitzer : Doping in the GDR. A historical overview of a conspiratorial practice. Genesis - Responsibility - Dangers , Sport and Book Strauss, Cologne 2003, p. 200
  4. ^ Hajo Seppelt , Holger Schück : Indictment: Kinderdoping , Tenea-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 149
  5. ↑ From the Stasi files of sports medicine doctor Bernd Pansold: From brain hormones and criminal offenses , article by Jens Weinreich in the Berliner Zeitung of April 16, 1998
  6. ↑ Decision of the Federal Court of Justice of February 9, 2000 (PDF; 241 kB)
  7. ^ Austria as a doping hub , profile online from October 18, 2008, quote from Giselher Spitzer
  8. ↑ Maier dismisses doping rumors , Associated Press from October 24, 1998
  9. ^ GDR doping was, ÖSV distance is , Der Standard from May 7, 2009
  10. ↑ The reserves are far from being exhausted , Wiener Zeitung of May 16, 2002
  11. ↑ Ex-doping doctor Pansold looks after Red Bull Aces ( memento from March 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Wirtschaftsblatt from February 24, 2006
  12. ↑ The father and his champions , Tagesspiegel from October 15, 2011
  13. ↑ Der Steirische Zeus , Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 19, 2010
  14. ^ Advice from the official , Frankfurter Rundschau of February 13, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Pansold, Bernd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports medicine specialist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwickau