Talent-spotter ‘too close’ to athletes who tested positive for drugs
ROBERT WAGNER has seen life from both sides of the tracks. Once a sports journalist, he later managed some of the world’s most famous athletes.
His career as an agent began soon after the 1988 Gugl games in Linz, which he organised and would continue to run until 2002, and again in 2014.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Wagner seized on the uncertainty that followed the collapse of East Germany’s highly successful – and corrupt – athletics programme. Armed with a car boot full of wine meant as “gifts” to the regime’s coaches, he was held at the Iron Curtain border crossing for more than three hours.
Yet he returned to Austria four days later having signed up some of the top sportsmen and women produced by one of the Eastern bloc’s foremost “medal factories”. They included Heike Drechsler, a sprinter and long-jumper whom Wagner said agreed to work with him despite her father’s warning that “all managers are gangsters”.
Eventually, Wagner was able to boast that he “looked after” 90 per cent of all top-level former East German athletes. They were joined by the Olympic, World Championship and 100m world record-holder Ben Johnson, and Johnson’s Canadian colleague (and fellow doper) Mark Mckoy.
British names Colin Jackson, Jason Gardener and Dame Kelly Holmes were among those he represented. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by any of these athletes. Dennis Mitchell, who won six 100m titles at Gugl in 14 attempts, told undercover reporters the pair first met at the event in 1988.
Mitchell said he had benefitted from more than one race rigged by his former manager, with Wagner confirming: “We fixed it, every once in a while we fixed it and we let him [Mitchell] get away with a false start.”
Yet Mitchell could also be on the receiving end of Wagner’s machinations, he claimed, losing to one of “Robert’s guys” a few years later. Mitchell said: “So he [Wagner] said he has a good friend who’s a starter. So all he has to do is give him the wink. And one of his athletes got a clean, clean false start, like two steps! He was gone, pow!”
Wagner has a son with the American sprinter Kelli White, 40, a one-time client who was herself banned following the Balco doping scandal. Once asked about his “bad reputation”, Wagner replied: “Maybe I was too close to people who gave a positive test. I have had 800 athletes over the past 25 years and there have been 11 positive tests.” Luke Heighton