"Oh, by the way, we put you on steroids. Our bad!"Germany's Olympic committee has agreed to compensate former GDR; (German Democratic Republic), athletes who were systematically and unknowingly doped under Communist rule. Each athlete would receive up to 9,250 Euros.
If you didn't get the memo, after World War II Germany was divided in half at gun point by both the Russians and the Americans who subsequently set up two dissimilar nations governed by two dissimilar systems. i.e. A communist government versus a democratically elected republic. The Communist side was called the GDR, the capitalistic side was called the Federal Republic of Germany, (FRG)
The GDR did some really bad things to their Olympic athletes. The GDR used the Olympics as a PR and marketing tool to try and gain national recognition by way of sending what were seemingly superior athletes to the games; (To be fair, all nations probably do), but the GDR cheated. They doped their athletes without the athletes knowledge sending unknowing cheats to represent their country in what was seemingly a "parade of horribles", or athletes with grotesquely modified bodies by way of anabolic steroids who went on to achieve dubious world records.
Later in life these same athletes developed cancers, heart ailments, fragile bones and in one case a heart wrenching seven miscarriages. [link]
All this nonsense ended in 1990 and now there is but one unified Germany, the FRG, that is thriving and successful. The FRG is going to compensate the former GDR athletes despite that they were doped under a different regime as outlined in this article. [link]
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