Manfred Donike

Manfred Donike collected 14 national titles in cycling, mainly in the Madison competition together with Uwe Messerschmidt. Between 1984 and 1989 he mainly started with him at six-day races and claimed 21 victories. Later he became a sports administrator in the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and a member of the Jury in the Tour de France and overtook further functions in Germany (such as organizer of the cycling race “Rund um Köln” (Tour Around Cologne)). He died at the age of 42 from a heart attack.

His brother Alexander became a cycling official in the UCI. His father Manfred Donike was also a cyclist, competing in the 1960 and 1961 Tour de France. But he is most famous as a chemist and for his work in the fight against doping, for which he was awarded the Olympic Order in Silver in 1995. In 1977 he was appointed director of the Institute of Biochemistry at the Sports University in Cologne. There he was instrumental in the development of drug tests still in use today. Today the worldwide standards in the sample preparation and the analytical methods are based in many parts on his ideas, suggestions and experiences. Donike was the leading doping expert who testified against the sprinter Ben Johnson in the 1988 sprint scandal. Manfred Donike senior died following a heart attack during a flight from Frankfurt am Main to Johannesburg.