Quote:
Originally Posted by NadalAgassi
One thing I find surprising looking back in tennis is how many of the great German players were West, not East German. Becker, Stich, Graf, and Kohde Kilsch, the 4 best German players to emerge in the Open Era are all West German. That was not the norm in sport, by a huge margin more great athlete cames from East Germany than West Germany, in large part to a heavily invested doping program of the 70s and 80s.
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the GDR only fueled olympic sports because they used the olympics were a huge propaganda thing in the socialist countries. and tennis only became olympic when the GDR was already close to collapse.
on top of that tennis was especially disliked since it was considered a "rich mans sport". they had a very good player named thomas emmerich was was GDR champ for about 15 times at least but the GDR didn't allow him to play international tournaments (BTW I had some lessons with him since he is now coaching at my former club).