Chris-Carol Bremer

Chris-Carol Bremer
Personal information
Surname:	Chris-Carol Bremer
Nation:	Germany
Swimming style (s) :	butterfly
Society:	• - 1995: SSG Nord-Calenberg • 1995–1998: SG Hamburg • 1998–2000: SGS Hannover
Birthday:	5th January 1971
Place of birth:	Hanover
Size:	1.83 m
Weight:	75 kg
Medal table

Chris-Carol Bremer (born January 5, 1971 in Hanover ) is a former German swimmer . He belonged in the 1990s to the world's best athletes in the butterfly - swimming style ; his special route was the 200 meters. At the 1994 World Championships in Rome, he placed in the top 3 in the world. Except for a gold medal at the European Short Course Championships , however, he was never able to win a major international title. During his active career he was athletes spokesman for the German Swimming Association for a long time .

Athletic career

Bremer began his swimming career in his home town of Seelze with SSG Nord-Calenberg , to which he remained loyal until 1995. At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona he finished 9th over the 200 meter butterfly. Three years later and after moving to SG Hamburg , he won the most important international series of competitions on the 25-meter long "short course" with the Swimming World Cup . At the short course world championships in 1993 and 1995 he won bronze over his special track. At the following Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 , Bremer was the spokesman for the German swimming team, but due to illness did not get beyond a 16th place over 200 meters butterfly. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney he was no longer active, but acted as captain of the German swimming Olympic team.

Private life

Bremer was born as the oldest of four siblings; his father is a former athlete. Between 1990 and 1992 he was a sports soldier at the sports school of the German Armed Forces before he began a two-year course in physiology at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing on the basis of an athlete's scholarship. There he was included in the Dean's List - a category for students with particularly good grades - in 1992 and 1993 . In 1993 he enrolled in human medicine at the Hannover Medical School . After a practical year 1999/2000 at the Agnes Karll Clinic in Laatzen ( internal medicine , surgery ) and at the MSU ( orthopedics , sports medicine ), he completed his studies in 2000. In the following year 2001 he went through a program to obtain a Master of Business Administration at the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) in Singapore and Fontainebleau . In 2004, Bremer received his PhD from the University of Hamburg with Klaus-Michael Braumann with a dissertation on the "Use of breathing gas analysis to determine technical and metabolic abilities in swimmers in competitive sports". med. PhD .

He has been working for the pharmaceutical company Grünenthal GmbH since 2002 . Initially he was project manager for analgesics and strategic marketing at the German headquarters in Aachen, and then around 2007 as Pain Business Unit Director of the branch in Mexico . Since August 2009 he has been Marketing Director in Germany.

Views on doping

From 1998 to 2000, Bremer was a member of the joint anti- doping commission of the German Sports Confederation and the National Olympic Committee for Germany . In this function he was largely responsible for the fact that the German national swimming team agreed in January 1998 to retroactively remove the anonymization of all doping tests until 1992. From the test results then available, so-called steroid profiles should also be created, which are more meaningful than the individual doping tests. In June of the same year, however, he was disappointed that he saw no interest in the German Swimming Association in promoting the initiative. At the end of the 1990s, together with his colleague Mark Warnecke , he advocated the assumption that there was global doping in swimming and that these machinations would be covered up or even promoted by doctors and laboratories. He said in October 1998:

“In the pockets of swimmers, you can find testosterone and EPO . It's no secret that doping controls can be bypassed easily. The fatal principle is that you try to stay just below the quotient six. This works by regularly taking small doses or injecting depot preparations. The athlete is adjusted by the doctor to stay just below the limit. The whole thing is just a matter of timing. It is possible that you swallow the pill in the evening and in the morning when the inspector comes, nothing is detectable. What is noticeable are only the mishaps, if it doesn't work out everybody just looks the other way. "

Two years later, when asked whether he had stopped his efforts to combat doping practices, he said that - since he could not produce any solid evidence - he had no choice but to continue to campaign aggressively for even better controls. He does not want to harm the swimming sport in any way by only making assertions in the room. In August 2000, Bremer complained: “If you have the right timing, you can bypass any control.” In the run-up to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney , statements by Bremer caused considerable tension between the swimming teams in Germany and Australia. The controversy, which received a lot of media attention, dragged on for a little over a week and was dubbed the “swimming war” by the tabloid media. In an interview with the daily newspaper Die Welt , which was printed on July 8, Bremer pointed out that doping could lead to disproportionate growth of the hands or feet. The critical sentences were:

DIE WELT: "Is it just the fast times that make the Australians suspicious?"

Bremer: “You have to focus on physical characteristics. If - as the Australians assume - growth hormones are handled, one symptom in adult athletes is giant stature. That means hands or feet are supernaturally large. "

DIE WELT: "World record holder Ian Thorpe has shoe size 51."

Bremer: “I won't say more about that. People should only know what physical characteristics certain doping methods leave behind. And then they should form their own judgment. "

Among other things, the most widely read Australian newspaper The Sun-Herald reported on the front page of Bremer's statements two days later. Thorpe's manager David Flaskas pointed out that the allegations were absurd and that he had had enough of the Germans' dirty tactics. His striking statement “Ian may have big feet, but the Germans have big mouths” became the catchphrase of the dispute. Grant Hackett asked provocatively in an exclusive for the Sunday Telegraph, “You just don't get it, Chris Carol Bremer. Hello? Are you brain dead or what? ”. Bremer himself qualified his statements in an interview with the same newspaper; he did not specifically want to accuse Thorpe of doping. A few days later he apologized in a personal letter to the then 17-year-old Australian and accused the Australian press of misrepresenting his statements.

Nowadays, Bremer is a member of the Advisory Board for Doping Victims Help .

Web links

• Chris-Carol Bremer in the database of Swimrankings.net (English)
• Chris-Carol Bremer in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Chris-Carol Bremer's dissertation on ddb.de ( German Digital Library )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Matthias Krause: Chris-Carol Bremer is on his own. In: Berliner Zeitung . June 8, 1998, accessed June 12, 2015 . 
2. ↑ “Systematic doping in swimming?” ( Memento of the original dated December 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - in Neue Zürcher Zeitung , No. 243, October 20, 1998. Accessed June 22, 2011. 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Sven Beckedahl: "" Sandra Völkers departure does not make a good impression "" - in Die Welt , July 10, 2000. Retrieved June 22, 2011.
4. ↑ “Big feet - big mouths”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - in Rheinische Post , July 13, 2000. Retrieved June 22, 2011.  
5. ↑ "" Are you brain dead? ""  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - in Rheinische Post , July 16, 2000. Retrieved June 22, 2011.  
6. ↑ "The dispute over feet that are too big comes to an end"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - in Rheinische Post , July 18, 2000. Retrieved June 22, 2011.