Fredy Schmidtke

Fredy Schmidtke (1 July 1961 to 1 December 2017) was a German track cyclist who won the Olympic gold medal in the 1000 metres time trial at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He was born in Cologne, in what was then West Germany, and rose through the youth ranks of West German cycling in the late 1970s before turning to the sprint and kilometre time trial events on the track. At the Los Angeles Games he also rode the sprint, where he finished eighth. His Olympic title in the time trial was the high point of a career that also brought medals at the amateur world championships, including a world title in the time trial and a number of places on the podium in the tandem event. After his sporting career he worked outside cycling, and he died of a heart attack on 1 December 2017, at the age of 56.