Andreas Wornowski, a former GDR boxer, suffers from significant health issues stemming from forced doping during his athletic career. Despite initially dismissing inquiries about performance-enhancing drugs, the lasting effects include chronic pain and depression. Wornowski's journey in boxing began at the age of 11, eventually attending an elite sports boarding school. He reflects on how the brutality of boxing, compounded by medication to enhance performance, resulted in a grueling struggle for athletes like him, describing it as a 'battle with the body' during his training.
"I didn't allow myself to think about it, never gave it a second thought, ignored it," Wornowski stated about his awareness of performance-enhancing drugs in his youth.
"Boxing means consenting to bodily harm. If the hardness of the blows was then also increased with medication, it turned into a real 'battle with the body'—with 'steam hammer' blows to the head," Wornowski reflects on the brutality of the sport.
Today, the 54-year-old former boxer has been suffering from massive health issues, including pain day and night—starting from his crippled punching hand. He also suffers from severe depression.
Wornowski describes the time that followed as 'a kind of extreme training camp', in which everything was to be extracted by means of performance-enhancing, painkilling drugs.
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