Two-time East German Olympic weightlifting medallist and former world recordholder Gerd Bonk who later blamed the communist regime's sports doping programme for damaging his organs, has passed away at the age of 63. According to Germany's Help for the Victims of Doping group (DOH), Bonk died on Monday having collapsed and fallen into a coma at the end of September due to severe organ damage, caused by the drugs he took.
Bonk won a bronze in the +110kg clean and jerk at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, then took snatch silver in the same weight category four years later at the Montreal games. The giant German also took a silver in the 1975 world championships in Moscow and set two former world records in the clean and jerk in his career having managed to lift 252.5kgs.
But Bonk, from Greiz, Thuringia, was one of around 200 state-approved athletes documented on the GDR regime's doping programme and was given the performance-enhancing steroid Oral-Turinabol for years. He won 31 medals in international competition. "A doctor came in and said, 'if you don't take it, you're off the team tomorrow'," he once told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung explaining how he started doping.
Bonk was assured the drugs had few side effects: "Your beard will grow a bit, but nothing more will happen." The trained car mechanic was later forced to retire, aged just 37, due to the effects of doping on his health and given a disability pension. "GDR sport has ruined my body," said Bonk, who later grew bitter about the lack of help and support in Germany for former East German athletes who were forced into the doping programme. "Burned by the GDR, forgotten by united Germany," he wrote.
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