Volker Mai
Volker Mai, born on 3 May 1966 in Templin, is a former East German triple jumper who competed for SC Neubrandenburg. He still holds the world junior record in the triple jump with 17.50 metres, set on 23 June 1985 in Erfurt.
Mai won his first international medal at the 1985 European Athletics Indoor Championships, taking bronze with a jump of 17.14 metres. In the same year, he completed a triple jump and long jump double at the European Athletics Junior Championships in Cottbus and finished second in the triple jump at the European Cup.
In 1986 he finished seventh at the European Athletics Championships. He added another indoor medal in 1989 at the European Athletics Indoor Championships, winning silver behind Nikolay Musiyenko. His last appearance for East Germany came at the 1990 European Athletics Championships, where he finished fifth.
Nationally, Mai was very successful. He won the East German Indoor triple jump title four times (1984, 1985, 1987, 1989) and the outdoor title twice (1984, 1988). After German reunification, he won the German indoor triple jump title in 1991, 1993 and 1995, and the outdoor title in 1994. In total, he collected ten national triple jump titles and also won the 1989 East German long jump championship.
Mai was named in a book about state-sponsored doping by Werner Franke and Brigitte Berendonk, who used leaked Stasi files to claim he used Oral Turinabol between 1982 and 1984.
After his track career, he moved to the United States to study microbiology. He earned a PhD in microbiology from the University of Georgia, a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health, and worked as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. Since 2007 he has been an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Florida.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:19 (CET).