Manfred Cloud

Manfred Wolke medal table
boxer
GDR - Germany
Olympic games
gold	1968 Mexico City	Welterweight
European Championship
silver	1967 Rome	Welterweight
silver	1971 Madrid	Welterweight

Manfred Wolke (born January 14, 1943 in Potsdam-Babelsberg ) is a German Olympic champion in boxing and boxing trainer.

Career

Manfred Wolke was born the youngest of 10 children and grew up without his father, who died in World War II. He learned the profession of a locomotive fitter . After starting out as a footballer, he began boxing at BSG Motor Babelsberg in 1959 . From 1965, Wolke trained at ASK Vorwärts Berlin . He was from 1967 to 1970 in the welterweight and 1971 in the light middleweight GDR champion. In 1967 and 1971 he was Vice European Champion. In 1968 Manfred Wolke crowned his amateur career with the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Mexico when he defeated the Cameroonian Joseph Bessala in the final . This success was decisive for his further life as an athlete, said Wolke later. At the following Summer Olympics in Munich in 1972 he was the flag bearer of the GDR delegation for the opening ceremony , but could not repeat the previous success. Handicapped by an injury to the eyebrow, he lost early in the Olympic boxing tournament to the eventual winner Emilio Correa Vaillant from Cuba. Shortly thereafter, Wolke ended his active boxer career with a record of 258 fights, of which he won 236.

Cloud (right) with Henry Maske, 1983

After studying at the German University of Physical Culture , he coached the amateurs Rudi Fink , who became Olympic champion in 1980 under cloud. In 1988 Henry Maske won the gold medal at the Olympic Games with Wolke as coach and the world championship title a year later. Axel Schulz was also one of his protégés in the amateur field . In 1985, Wolke was forced to move to the junior division due to alcohol problems and was downgraded from lieutenant colonel to major (Wolke: "I had run over a stop sign, but didn't want to admit it. Then I realized that I was on the brink") Men's coach. Cloud was described as "the boxing maniac, the boxing obsessed, the teacher of the Frankfurt School". "Without the GDR, my sporting career would not have been possible," said Wolke in 1996. As an amateur trainer, Wolke, who had the rank of lieutenant colonel in the NVA , won a total of 23 medals with his protégés at the Olympic Games, World and European Championships.

In 1990 he moved to the Sauerland boxing stable together with Maske . In March 1993, he became the IBF light heavyweight world champion as a trainer . Mask as a boxer and Wolke as a trainer became the main characters in the boom in German professional boxing in the 1990s. Wolkes protégé Axel Schulz fought as a professional for the heavyweight world championship. The fact that Schulz missed the title was a defeat for Cloud that he will never get over, the coach said in 2018.

He later trained professionals such as Danilo Häußler (became European super middleweight champion in 2001 under Wolke), Timo Hoffmann , Kai Kurzawa , Enad Licina and Artur Hein . From December 2006 to March 2007 Manfred Wolke trained again for Henry Maske in preparation for his rematch on March 31, 2007 against Virgil Hill , which Maske was finally able to win.

In autumn 2009 it became known that the Sauerland boxing stable no longer wanted to extend the contract with Wolke, so that the professional boxing camp in Frankfurt / Oder closed its doors in 2010. The separation from Sauerland took place in strife.

In September 2013 Manfred Wolke publicly stated in an interview that he would be the trainer of his former protégé Enad Licina again. Licina was fourth in the IBF world rankings in cruiserweight and hoped with Wolkes help to fulfill his dream of world championship, which failed.

"What Wolke can show in sporting terms will probably retain its uniqueness in this country forever," said boxing journalist Gunnar Meinhardt, assessing Wolke's career as a boxer and trainer. Cloud particularly distinguished discipline, intelligence, diligence and hardness towards himself. Henry Maske said about his trainer, with whom he had a tense relationship at times both as an amateur and as a professional: “Without Manfred Wolke, I would not have achieved any of this (...) He was able to convince his boxers with a lot of expertise what they were doing have to do and what not ”. According to Mask, Wolke was the “philosopher among the coaches, the fine spirit”.

Cloud lives in Frankfurt (Oder) and has three children and four grandchildren.

International success

year	space	competition	Weight class	Results
1967	2.	EM in Rome	Welter	after winning points over Wiesław Rudkowski , Poland, Jörgen Hansen, Denmark and Istvan Gali, Hungary and a point defeat against Bohumil Nemecek , Czechoslovakia
1968	gold	OS in Mexico City	Welter	after winning points over Andres Molina, Cuba, Expedito Alencar, Brazil, Celal Sandal, Turkey, Vladimir Musalimow, USSR and Joseph Bessala , Cameroon
1969	5.	EM in Bucharest	Welter	after winning points over Zdzisław Filipiak, Poland and Jovan Dzakula, Yugoslavia and a point defeat against Viktor Silbermann, Romania
1969	1.	7. Championship of the armies of the Soc. States in Kiev	Welter	with victories over Wladimir Musalimow, Sylwester Kaczyński, Poland and Ladislaw Hecej, Czechoslovakia
1970	1.	Chemistry Cup in Halle (Saale)	Welter	with a victory in the final over Helmut Zimmermann, GDR
1970	5.	TSC tournament in Berlin	Welter	after a point loss in the quarterfinals against János Kajdi , Hungary
1971	2.	EM in Madrid	Welter	after winning points over Eckhard Dagge , Federal Republic of Germany, Ryszard Petek , Poland, Iwan Kiriakow, Bulgaria and Damiano Lassandro, Italy and losing points to Janos Kajdi (2: 3 judges' votes)
1972	9.	OS in Munich	Welter	After a points win over Panayotis Therianos, Greece and a technical knockout loss (injury) in the 2nd round against Emilio Correa , Cuba

Explanations

• Welterweight, weight class, then up to 67 kg, light middle weight, up to 71 kg body weight
• OS = Olympic Games, EM = European Championship

Awards (selection)

• 1968 - Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver
• 1988 - Order Banner of Labor Stage I

literature

• Dieter Busse, Zitta Übel: Berlin Olympians 1986–1996 . Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin, 1996
• Klaus Gallinat:  Cloud, Manfred . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Boxing - GDR - Championships of the amateurs (welterweight) on Sport-Komplett.de
2. ↑ Boxing - GDR - Amateurs Championships ( light middleweight) on Sport-Komplett.de
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} When Manfred Cloud's first big hour struck. In: Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg. Retrieved October 22, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Manfred Wolke . In: Internationales Sportarchiv 17/2012 from April 24, 2012 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
5. ↑ ^{a b} n-tv NEWS: Manfred Wolke remains the boxing philosopher. Retrieved October 22, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Boxing trainer Manfred Wolke turns 60. January 13, 2003, accessed on October 22, 2019 (German). 
7. ↑ ^{a b} Relationship to cloud only a beautiful appearance. In: merkur.de. March 27, 2007, accessed October 22, 2019 . 
8. ^ ^{A b} Stefan Reckziegel: Trainer Manfred Wolke: "I will miss him". (PDF) In: Hamburger Abendblatt. November 22, 1996. Retrieved October 22, 2019 . 
9. ↑ Stefan Reckziegel: Henry Maske, the champion. (PDF) In: Hamburger Abendblatt. March 22, 1993. Retrieved October 23, 2019 . 
10. ↑ ^{a b} Gunnar Meinhardt : Boxing legend Manfred Wolke is 75: a slim man, irrepressible will . January 13, 2018 ( welt.de [accessed October 22, 2019]).
11. ↑ Häussler. Cloud has a new mask. In: bz-berlin.de. Retrieved October 22, 2019 . 
12. ↑ Enad Licina in action in Turkey on September 27th. (No longer available online.) In: Boxen-heute.de. September 17, 2013, archived from the original on September 21, 2013 ; accessed on February 14, 2014 . 
13. ^ BoxRec: Enad Licina. Retrieved October 22, 2019 .