Birgit Dressel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birgit Dressel (born May 4, 1960 in Bremen , † April 10, 1987 in Mainz ) was a German athlete in heptathlon . She died of multiple organ failure caused by doping .

Sports career

In the junior national competition Poland-Great Britain-Federal Republic of Germany 1976 with three athletes each Dressel started in the national jersey for the first time (Athletics Community Bremen-East). In 1977 she was one of three cadres of the German Athletics Association alongside Holger Marten and Andre Cords, and in the following year she became German youth indoor champion in the high jump in Sindelfingen and in July of that year in Göttingen with a 1.84 m German youth champion. In 1979 Birgit Dressel became the German junior high jump champion. At the German Athletics Championships in 1982, she took third place in the women's all-around competition, and second place in the 1983 indoor championships in the high jump.

During the 23rd Summer Olympics in Los Angeles , which was affected by the boycott of the Eastern bloc , she was the third-best German to finish ninth in the heptathlon .

At the European Athletics Championships in 1986 in Stuttgart, she reached 6,487 points in the heptathlon, took fourth place and jumped 1.92 m high. At the 1986 German Cup, she started for USC Mainz and in the three-way fight - 100-meter run , long jump and shot put - with 2627 points , she erased the German record that had been held by Heide Ecker-Rosendahl until then . With 6201 points, she held the DLV's annual heptathlon performance in 1987.

Dressel achieved five ADH titles in her ten-year sports career , she took part in the Universiades in 1981, 1983 and 1985, as well as once in the Olympic Games and in the European Championships, and was German champion four times. She died after an explosive multi- organ failure as a result of a possibly toxic-allergic circulatory shock as a result of doping . She found her final resting place in the main cemetery in Mainz.

Werner Franke said in 2007 that Dressel's death could probably have been prevented if the treating doctors had known that she had been taking doping substances.

Results of the 1984 Olympic participation in the heptathlon

discipline placement
100 m hurdles 15th
high jump 2
Shot put 10
200 m run 18th
Long jump 7th
Javelin throw 5
800 m run 12

Circumstances of death

On April 8, 1987, Birgit Dressel felt pain in her left hip and buttocks during shot put training. The first treating doctor, an orthopedic surgeon , injected her with the local anesthetic Xylonest and the pain reliever Voltaren . The next afternoon, the pain increased, and the doctor gave her two injections: the higher-dose Voltaren and the metamizole preparation baralgin. At home she received the platelet aggregation inhibitor Godamed ( ASS ), Tranquase-5 ( Diazepam ) and Optipyrin suppositories ( Paracetamol , Codeine ). Because of severe pain, she took 10 to 15 Godamed tablets. She consulted two other doctors who prescribed ASA, heparin cream and ice cubes.

On the morning of April 10th, the orthopedic surgeon came to see her , diagnosed her with renal colic, and injected her with attritin . She was admitted to the University Hospital in Mainz, and two other doctors administered Buscopan intravenously to her . In the afternoon, Dressel was transferred to trauma surgery, and four other doctors gave her a vein drop of Buscopan dissolved in Sterofundin . They suspected spinal damage. Three more doctors appeared while Dressel complained of being very thirsty and her lips and fingernails turned blue. Two nerve specialists were called in when her heart raced and breathing accelerated.

A seven-person accident medical team appeared, Birgit Dressel moved her arms and opened her eyes for the last time. She was given an oxygen mask, was transferred to intensive care in the evening and, for the first time correctly, was diagnosed with a toxic reaction. The last two doctors gave her four blood transfusions , high doses of endogenous hormones and finally bicarbonate to balance her acidotic metabolism. Birgit Dressel died three hours after being admitted to the intensive care unit.

The cause of death was determined that Dressel had been a patient of the Freiburg sports doctor Armin Klümper since 1981 and had last received around 400 syringes in 16 months. She was given the anabolic Stromba and ended up taking the maximum dose of six tablets a week. She also received the doping agent Megagrisevit . In February 1987, her Klümper had injected 15 different drugs, including animal cell preparations that led to permanent immune reactions in the body. Dressel took 20 different preparations from three doctors.

Dressel left her partner and trainer Thomas Kohlbacher. As of 2015, Kohlbacher is an assessor on the board of the athletics department at USC Mainz and is involved in the club's coaching staff. In 1995 Kohlbacher did not want to provide any information about whether he had known about doping dressings because he did not want to incriminate himself.

Inadequate processing of the death

The death of Birgit Dressel seamlessly turned into a scandal of inadequate processing, a “multi-institutional failure”. Two criminal charges for negligent homicide and negligent bodily harm were discontinued without result. The Mainz public prosecutor apparently did not cooperate with the Freiburg public prosecutor, who at the same time filed a lawsuit against Klümper in Freiburg u. a. prepared for prescription fraud on a large scale. Despite more energetic inquiries from the lawyer Joachim Linck and the sports physiologist Hans-Volkhart Ulmer, the responsible health insurance company made no move to critically review the prescription practices of Klümper or other doctors. With the exception of DLV President Eberhard Munzert , who was bullied away as a result, German sport quickly agreed on the formula that Birgit Dressel's death was caused by overdosed painkillers, not doping drugs.

literature

  • Brigitte Berendonk : Doping. From research to fraud. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1992, ISBN 3-499-18677-2 , pp. 255-258.
  • Andreas Singler , Gerhard Treutlein : Doping in top-class sport. Sports science analyzes of national and international performance development. Part 1. Meyer & Meyer, Aachen 2000, pp. 275-286.
  • Andreas Singler: Death is irreversible. The German heptathlete Birgit Dressel died 20 years ago - did top sport learn from it? In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 7th / 8th April 2007, p. 62 ( online ).
  • Andreas Singler, Lisa Heitner :: Armin Klümper and the German doping problem . 8.3.7 The death of Birgit Dressel in 1987 and the subsequent multi-institutional failure, p. 281-310 ( uni-freiburg.de [PDF]).

filming

  • Dernier stade (German "Zielgerade"). France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany 1994. Director: Christian Zerbib

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Slide in the legal drug swamp, Der Spiegel, 37/1987, September 7, 1987
  2. ^ Doping in West Germany: Died in vain , Deutschlandfunk , April 9, 2017
  3. ↑ 30 years after the death drama - Birgit Dressel took the FRG innocence. n-tv, April 10, 2017, accessed April 10, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Deadly Medicine , Der Tagesspiegel , April 10, 2007
  5. ^ Steve Buffery: Why pro-style hypocrisy no solution to doping Toronto Sun, July 24, 2000.
  6. ^ Doping: Eberhard Gienger: I took anabolic steroids , May 12, 2006, FAZ.net
  7. ↑ Jan Böhm: Fall Dressel: Blank recipes for anabolic steroids from Klümper? , Berliner Kurier , November 6, 1995, [1] , November 6, 1995
  8. ↑ a b Jens Steinigen: Civil law aspects of doping from the point of view of the top athlete Weissensee Verlag, Berlin 2003, (PDF, 305 kByte)
  9. ^ To Athlete Dying Young Time, October 10, 1988
  10. ↑ Slide into the legal drug swamp . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1987, pp. 228-253 ( online - Sept. 7, 1987 ).
  11. ^ Board of the Athletics Department July 27, 2012
  12. ↑ Training times August 5, 2015
  13. ↑ Birgit Dressel's death: painful silence , FAZ, April 9, 2012.
  14. ↑ Andreas Singler, Lisa Heitner: Armin Klümper and the West German doping problem. (PDF; 9.0 MB) 8.3.7 The death of Birgit Dressel in 1987 and the subsequent multi-institutional failure. In: uni-freiburg.de. P. 281 , accessed June 29, 2019 .
  15. ↑ cf. Singler / Treutlein 2000, pp. 275-286; Singler 2007
personal data
SURNAME Dressel, Birgit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German athlete
DATE OF BIRTH May 4th 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen , Germany
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1987
Place of death Mainz , Germany