A single day in September 2011 could have been enough to shake the German sports world to its core. On the day in question, historians from Berlin and Münster presented to the media their findings on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in West German sports. It was the culmination of two years of combing through archives and interviewing historical witnesses. The results were shocking, revealing an extensive system of doping that existed in West Germany prior to German reunification, conducted by sports doctors, covered up by officials and supported by the government.

The same day, Sept. 26, 2011, SPIEGEL published a five-page article detailing the contents of the researchers' preliminary report. This encompassed criminal activities, secret dealings, media-hungry politicians eager to keep pace with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the Cold War, reckless doctors and millions in misused tax funds. A great deal of information, in other words, that could have been cause for outcry.

But instead, next to nothing happened. There was little response from politicians, officials or the general public. No one was surprised, it seemed, to learn that West Germany, like East Germany, had run doping programs -- organized differently than in the GDR, the secrets more closely guarded, but just as systematic. Previously, doping here had largely been viewed as being an East German phenomenon.

Now, though, a second run at the issue has produced outrage after all. Earlier this month, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on the study once again. And while what it said contained little in terms of content that hadn't been known already, it also printed the revelation that the researchers' final report, weighing in at around 800 pages, had been complete since March 2012, yet remained unpublished. Why was the tome simply gathering dust in a basement?

It seems as though there might have been an attempt to cover up facts some might find uncomfortable -- a suspicion that has finally garnered a reaction, along with the study's confirmation of prior findings and the way it expands upon, structures and collates what was previously known about doping in German sports. For example, as early as 1991, shortly after German reunification and at the same as the GDR's systematic doping program was being exposed, a German Sports Association (DSB) fact-finding commission was collecting evidence that put considerable dents in West Germany's squeaky clean image.

This discovery is raising new questions: If doping was so systematic back then, is it still rampant in Germany today? Is enough being done to counter the problem? There are those who have their doubts. Proponents of a German anti-doping law are raising their voices once again, taking advantage of the current focus on the topic, in the hope of gaining attention for an undertaking that has proven a difficult one.

Resistance and Reluctance

Many sporting officials and politicians display noticeably little interest in confronting the past. As doping in sports has become the sudden object of vehement debate, the response from officials has consisted largely of attempts to placate.

Germany's Interior Ministry has attempted to dismiss the study as a "semi-finished product that at best is in need of a great deal of revision." The Federal Institute for Sport Science (BISP), despite being the body that commissioned the report, has been similarly reluctant to acknowledge its results, accusing the researchers of shoddy methodology. The sports committee of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, is now asking for more information, although its members long allowed themselves to be put off when they wanted to know more about the contents of the report.

As for Thomas Bach, 59, the president of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) is pleased to be able to say he has taken a stand against doping before, when he was spokesman for the German Fencing Association. Yet he claims never to have caught wind of any such practices during his time as a fencer -- this from the country's top sports official, who is otherwise exceedingly well connected.

Throughout the three years of their work, the historians repeatedly came up against reluctance to provide information. Often they were granted little or no access to archives, with the resistance sometimes reaching absurd levels . When SPIEGEL reported in 2011 that the researchers had discovered a letter showing drug tests at the 1966 World Cup had revealed traces of ephedrine in three West German national team players, the DFB took action. But while British tabloids delighted in reporting on stimulant-using West German World Cup losers, the DFB found little humor in the situation, commissioning a lawyer to compose a 16-page expert opinion meant to dismiss even the slightest suspicion that such doping had taken place.

Two or three weeks from now, the Bundestag's sports committee plans to hold a special session to further explore the matter. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has promised to attend. Bach received an invitation as well, but won't be attending, having too many other demands on his time. Bach hopes to by elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Sept. 10. This would be the final step along his long path to becoming the most powerful man in sports.

Bach is happy to let politicians pay him court on any occasion. That always makes for good photographs. He's less fond, though, of having to account to political representatives. The reaction to the doping study had hardly gotten underway before Bach announced that the DOSB would establish an independent commission to investigate the matter, headed by former German Constitutional Court judge Udo Steiner, 73. Steiner is close to Bach, and four years ago similarly helped to bring a quiet end to a debate over Olympic horses that had been treated with banned substances.

Bach's approach may sound as though it has drive and German thoroughness on its side, but the history of such commissions in the sports world is sobering. In most cases, they only serve those who want to play for time -- time for a scandal to lose momentum, the outrage over it to die down and grass to grow over the whole thing. And Bach certainly needs time. A scandal is the last thing he needs right now, when he is so close to the IOC throne.

Frustration

When it emerged in 2007 that the Freiburg University Clinic had been running a large-scale doping program for cyclists on team T-Mobile -- who regularly compete in major cycling races including the Tour de France -- two investigative commissions formed. The larger of the two, which has not yet finished its work, was headed first by a former judge and then by organized crime expert Letizia Paoli. Some members, such as anti-doping expert Werner Franke, have left the commission in frustration. Paoli, too, complains of feeling "deceived" by the university's directors and says important documents have been withheld. The commission's work has been so divisive that little new information is expected to emerge from it.

In most cases, the doping scandals that have nearly spelled the end of professional cycling in Germany actually began abroad. For Jan Ullrich and the T-Mobile team, downfall came in the form of the doping scandal  surrounding Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, who is currently on trial in Spain, and the memoirs of a Belgian massage therapist who had worked for the team. Gerolsteiner cyclists Stefan Schumacher and Bernhard Kohl succumbed to their own fall after testing positive for controlled substances during the Tour de France. And a retroactive analysis in France recently revealed that Erik Zabel, too, had lied about doping.

Spain, France and Austria have all passed anti-doping laws, as has Italy, a country not usually known for its speedy legislation. Prosecutors and police in these countries work to catch both the athletes who engage in doping and those who aid and abet them, setting up raids to secure evidence. That's how it works in countries where cheating in sports is a criminal offense.

In Germany, the sports lobby has so far prevented politicians from passing anything stricter than a pharmaceuticals law. When German athletes are defeated by foreign competition, this is often taken as proof of the above-board practices of the German competitive sports world. The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) receives frequent praise, but in practice receives too little funding from sports associations and the government to do more than catch a few small fish. Last year, its 8,567 out-of-competition drug tests caught just eight athletes, a miniscule success rate.

Pushing for an Anti-Doping Law

Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to feel no urgency to change Germany's legal position on this issue. The word from sources close to the chancellor last week was that no anti-doping law is up for debate and that existing laws are considered enough of a deterrent. That's a line of argument very much in line with Bach's tastes. The DOSB head prefers to keep public prosecutors out of doping investigations, in order to retain autonomy.

The results of the current study, though, have brought about louder calls for an anti-doping law in Germany. The sports world seems incapable of handling its largest problem internally. Drug tests alone aren't enough to solve the problem, as German sports associations would have the public believe. At most, such tests catch those athletes who are careless in their doping practices. And they rarely reveal those pulling the strings.

Proponents of an anti-doping law see their position confirmed by the study, which has breathed new life into the push for legislative reform. Rainer Stickelberger, justice minister in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg and a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), says he is "very optimistic" this will reduce resistance to an anti-doping law. Until now, the only other high-level politician who supported this position was his Bavarian counterpart Beate Merk of the Christian Social Union (CSU).

A few months ago, with the support of his state's governor, Winfried Kretschmann of the Green Party, Stickelberger introduced an initiative to the Bundesrat, the legislative body that represents Germany's federal states. His way was paved by a change of opinion among state-level justice ministers. At a recent session in Perl, a town in the state of Saarland, in mid-June, a two-thirds majority of these ministers expressed support for the introduction of an anti-doping law.