Football
9y

Stuttgart, Freiburg named in German doping study

A research study by the University of Freiburg claims to have found proof of "systemic" doping in professional football in Germany in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

On Monday, the Evaluation Commission Freiburg Sport Medicine, who were handed new documents supplied by the Freiburg commission in late 2014, released a short statement in which they claimed that anabolic doping was common not only in cycling, but also in professional football in Germany -- implicating VfB Stuttgart and, to a lesser degree, SC Freiburg.

"By means of the new documents, anabolic doping in a systemic way can be reliably proven in professional football in Germany for the first time," the statement read.

Both clubs released statements in reply, with Stuttgart claiming that because the study is looking at events decades ago they can't fully reconstruct events.

"In the interests of a clean sport VfB Stuttgart wants a complete clarification of the issue," the club said. "VfB Stuttgart is not in hand of the mentioned report. The club therefore can't retrace the evidence basing the accusation or know if and to which point they are true."

SC Freiburg also insisted that they will do all they can to support the investigation and spoke out against the use of performance enhancing drugs but insisted they had not seen "detailed results of determination or expert's reports."

In the late 1970s, VfB Stuttgart returned to the Bundesliga and won the league in 1984.

Ottmar Hitzfeld, the former FC Bayern coach who played for Stuttgart from 1975-78, told Sport1: "I am totally surprised by this reports. I can't imagine that one of my teammates knowingly used doping."

Hans-Jurgen Sundermann, Stuttgart coach from 1976-79 and 1980-82, told SID: "That's absurd. I can't imagine that and can entirely rule that out."

Rainer Koch, chairman of the German FA anti-doping commission, said that it was disconcerting that the commission had not been informed beforehand.

"To us the reports are new, we don't know about the findings and also not about a report of the commission and thus can't comment on the topic," he said.

In 2013, the findings of a comprehensive doping study by Berlin's Humboldt University, commissioned by the Federal Institute of Sport Science (BISp), suggested a systematic sports doping system was used by the former West Germany.

The findings also raised questions about West German football. It suggested that the 1954 World Cup-winning team used the methamphetamine Pervitin, and also questioned the 1966 finalists as well as the 1974 World Cup winners.

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