504 JUTTA BRAUN
until 1990—was only possible in a dictatorship. In a parliamentary democ-
racy, elite sports always have to compete for funding with other areas of
life subsidized by the state.^17 It was also hardly imaginable that West Ger-
many would weigh and measure all schoolchildren in order to assess their
potential talent for certain sport disciplines as it was done in the GDR.
Likewise, all the many coercive eff orts that the GDR state undertook to
hinder or even prohibit sport disciplines in which only a few medals could
be won would have been unthinkable. For instance, in order to promote
the Olympic discipline of Judo, the GDR prohibited the practice of karate.^18
West Germany was particularly curious about the competitive sports
training facilities in the East, especially the children’s and youth sport
schools that were one important motor behind the GDR’s sports machin-
ery. The East Germans, however, did not let their Western competitors
take a closer look, nor did they want to share much with their Soviet big
brother.^19 Nonetheless, the West was able to get a better idea about the
sports clubs in the GDR, which were not really Vereine (associations)
anymore, despite the fact that most people still referred to them as such.
For one, the kind of associational life typical of democratic civil societies
no longer existed in the GDR. Moreover, these clubs actually functioned
as highly specialized competitive sports complexes that invested an enor-
mous amount of human resources to guarantee the best comprehensive
coaching and training for their athletes.^20 After the disappointing medal
performance of the West German team at the Sarajewo Olympic Games in
1984, the model of the GDR sports clubs seemed to be a viable option for
a new training method in the eyes of the Federal Committee for Compet-
itive Sports (Bundesausschuss Leistungssport, or BAL). Accordingly, the
fi rst Olympic training centers (Olympiastützpunkte, or OSP) that followed
some principles of the GDR sports clubs were established in 1986. All the
OSP were tasked with coaching and training cadres in several diff erent
Olympic disciplines at once, a practice that was an eff ort to emulate the
centralized sports system of the GDR.^21 In spite of all of the eff orts made
by the West German sports associations, the GDR remained the more
successful German team at the Olympic Games until its collapse.
Two Worlds of Competitive SportsUntil the end of the Cold War, international sports events were the stage
for a direct struggle of power between East and West. Yet, the world
of sports was still very much divided by the Iron Curtain because the
socialist states refrained from participating in many professional sports
for ideological reasons. The Eastern Bloc countries, for example, were
missing at the most important spectator event in professional cycling, the