With Freedom, East German Training May Go Way Of Berlin Wall

NEUBRANDENBURG, East Germany - Our West German car drew glances as it hurtled across the cobblestone streets of East German villages cruelly retarded by 45 years of communism.

The old, from when this northern section of the country was proud Prussia, was in sad neglect. And the new, the 1950s post office and military architecture of the Soviet Union, was not worth considering.

Bleak, grim, polluted and yet at times alarmingly beautiful are those dark forests and expansive lakes after a rain.

As the wall came down in Berlin, the curtain rose on the rest of the country. And nothing during the past two decades has pleased the East and perplexed the West more than the superiority of the East German athletes, primarily at the Olympic Games.

Were they human, these athletes from a country of only 16 million that had won more Olympic medals than the United States? Did they smile and play, or would we find secret ``Frankenstein Factories?''

The invitation was tendered to visit Sport Club Neubrandenburg, home of three Olympic medal-winning women, home of the European Cup women's track club champions, a training school and facility for 130 elite athletes and 100 others hoping to become elite, from tall, bony 13-year-olds to the stunning 29-year-old Anke Behmer, the world's No. 2-ranked heptathlete.

The club won more medals in Seoul in women's track and field than West Germany, the country of 60 million that in October will swallow up all of East German sports in the final steps to unification.

The drive here is only about 85 miles from Berlin, but the trail strewn with villages and smoky, little East German Trabant automobiles takes nearly three hours to cover.

The city is near the East Sea and Denmark, and is about the size of Eugene, Ore., a town also known for track and field. At 8,000-capacity SC Neubrandenburg Stadium, world records in both the men's and women's discus were set, and still stand.

The SC head coach - ``The Chef'' - is Klaus Licht. He emerges from a five-story hotel for athletes built in the '50s, a building barely up to low-cost housing standards in the United States.

He is wearing a flashy purple running suit, bright and different enough in this culture to make you blink. The suit is by Nike.

``Our problem here,'' he said rubbing his thumb and first two fingers together, ``is money. We don't know where it will come from now.''

By October, only 15 of East Germany's 200 elite coaches will be on the payroll of the new East-West federation. And only star athletes will enjoy the subsidy and training given everyone at Neubrandenburg at no cost other than their ability, dedication and a normal childhood.

The East, like the West, will be driven by the economy, not the government. The East Germans will have to sell themselves - their athletes, their secrets, their facilities, anything they can, to survive. This month, SC Neubrandenburg began renting out its two 50-passenger buses to a town tourist company.

Nike jogged into the void created by political change this spring to sign eight Neubrandenburg athletes - all but one woman and all but one world-ranked - to celebrity contracts. In addition, all 130 elite athletes in the club will wear Nike shoes.

One Nike ``Just Do It'' poster adorned a wall in the lobby of the athletes' hotel, but otherwise it was institutional gray. The brightness came from Nike clothes and the smiles of the people. There were formal greetings, big handshakes and bowed heads, but they seemed genuine. There was reciprocal curiosity about a journalist from Amerika.

Few of the stereotypes hold up. The facilities at SC Neubrandenburg, while ingenious and far more comprehensive than anything in the United States, were old and militarylike, nothing as fancy as the new weight room at the University of Washington.

It would have been silly, I guess, to think that a country that couldn't produce a better auto than the Trabant would have a hidden, Silicon Valley-type athletic complex.

The East Germans have produced, per capita, the greatest track and field athletes, and nordic skiers and swimmers and kayakers and rowers, because it is what their government decided they must do to validate communism.

The bottom line was Olympic medals. The 50-kilometer walk offers as many medals as any of the team sports. Hence, the East Germans don't even field a basketball team.

Track and field, however, is an obsession.

At Neubrandenburg alone - and there are 15 such clubs in East Germany - 20 full-time coaches worked year-round during the country's heyday, at a ratio of 6-to-1 with athletes. There was a similar number of doctors and medical technicians, giving Neubrandenburg more coaching and technical support than countries the size of Great Britain.

Athletes were culled and coerced before high school age, not that they needed much coercion to join a sports club. Sports was a way to the top in this society, much as it has been perceived as a way out of the ghetto in ours.

Akhe Behmer, who has been at Neubrandenburg for 17 years, is near completion of a normal five-year program as a student of physical therapy. Except the government has allowed her 10 years in deference to her training.

``I am paid as a student for five years,'' she said, ``and then as a physical therapist for the next five years, because that's what I would have been had I not been in training.''

She lives in the village with her husband, a coach of younger athletes at the center, and their 5-year-old son. She says she has no special privileges other than to train as much as she needs.

In a long building best described as a shed, there is a four-lane 180-meter Tartan straightaway. Runners are timed every 10 meters. At two points the straight intersects an oval that gives 240 meters of turn running through a tunnel.

``We got the idea of the building from a dairy cow barn,'' Licht said.

Outside is a 65-meter artificial track running gradually up a hill. The adjacent stadium is good enough to have been the site of the national championships.

Everywhere, 14- and 15-year-old girls train, laughing as they go through rigorous weight training, every effort noted in copious training books.

Neubrandenburg is known as a center for middle-distance running - it includes Sigrun Wodars and Christine Wachtel, 800-meter Olympic gold and silver medalists - and throwing. In the winter, the discus and shot are thrown inside into big nets. In spring, they can be thrown from under cover to grassy, unmowed fields through doors that open at the end of a warehouse.

There seem to be no secrets, and if there are, the East Germans will open anything to anyone with enough interest to pay the price.

Already, the federation has notified the United States that the records and coaching manuals it has used for sports such as kayaking and rowing are for sale.

Already at Neubrandenburg, five of the 20 full-time coaches have left with another five expected to depart in the next two months.

``We are fearful of losing our jobs,'' Licht said. ``When we combine with the West, their philosophy will be ours.''

The West Germans have neither the facilities nor the results of the East Germans. Their emphasis has been on mass physical education and participation, not to mention attention to tennis and golf. Neubrandenburg is an endangered species.

``We'd like to help save it,'' Ian Campbell of Nike said. ``You know it works. The results have been obvious.''

Nike would like to make Neubrandenburg a center for elite athletes of every country. And, more specifically, for coaches of any country.

``Coaches and athletes would die for this kind of intensity and focus, not to mention the knowledge that is here,'' said Campbell, a former Olympic triple jumper. ``In terms of technique, coaches in the U.S. know nothing compared to these guys.''

Four of the coaches huddled in the dining room and talked about their concerns, which are no less than those of the athletes.

Reunification might mean a better life to many East Germans, but not to these coaches and athletes. They have been the chosen few.

``I have traveled,'' said Astrid Kumbernuss, the world's fifth-ranked shot-putter, ``and seen Western goods. Sure, now you can buy them in our town, but they cost many times as much.''

Behmer wonders who will pay for the final year of her education and whether the new government will recognize her degree if she gets it.

But while the presence of Nike is exciting and historic - the Oregon-based company is the first besides West German companies Adidas and Puma to have athletic ties with East Germany - the future is bleak for SC Neubrandenburg.

The economic demands of unification - the historic remaking of a socialist system - will be too great to continue the spending that has made Neubrandenburg a sanctuary for the swift and strong.

The combined Germany is not likely to win as many medals, because the emphasis will be on replacing the Trabant, not winning the pole vault.

``Maybe we can do aerobic dancing here,'' said Licht, the coach, in a lighter moment.

Maybe they'll have to.

Blaine Newnham's column usually is published Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the sports section of The Times.