Introduction: Contestation in the East German Sports System

Abstract

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) ceased to exist over 20 years ago (1990) and few of its legacies live on. One legacy that survives, albeit implicitly rather than explicitly, is the tiny state’s extremely successful sports system. Today, no sport official or manager, no politician or athlete would point to the GDR as a useful ‘template’ for emulation the world over; look more closely, however, and the key characteristics of the leading sports models are not so very different from those of the GDR. Such leading sports models in advanced capitalist states in the 21st century are characterised by their Olympic-driven sport policies, youth development, talent identification systems, professional coaching schemes and full-time, paid athletes.¹ There appears compelling evidence that, at a structural level at least, we are witnessing a convergence of sports models among the leading sporting nations and Barrie Houlihan’s description of part of the Soviet model of sport in 1997 as ‘… the subordination of domestic [sports] governing bodies to government policy and the use of public money to support elite athletes’, would characterise the current sport systems in the UK, Australia, Canada and a number of other countries besides.² Beyond the structural similarities of modern sports models there also exists a gradual convergence around the raison d’être for investing increasing resources into sport: elite sport success — especially Olympic success — is thought to bring with it international prestige, aid the building of national identity and engender a ‘feel good’ factor among the population.³