Helmut Donner

Helmut Donner was born in Vienna on 15 August 1941. In the years after the Second World War he spent a period living with a foster family in Tilburg in the Netherlands. After returning to Vienna he played youth football, including for First Vienna FC, and wanted to become a footballer. He told the Kurier in 2019 that it was only because his mother hated football that he became, as he put it, the only athlete in Floridsdorf at the time. He took up athletics at 16 and later studied journalism and communication.

Donner competed in the high jump and also in the decathlon, using the straddle technique of the era. On 8 August 1959, a week before his 18th birthday, he cleared 2.00 metres at the Austria against Spain athletics international on the WAC ground in Vienna's Prater, in front of about 3,000 spectators. It was the first two metre jump by an Austrian, improved his own national record of 1.96 metres by four centimetres, and was a European junior record. He was known for jumping with only one shoe.

Representing DSG Wien, he won the Austrian high jump title six times, in 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964 and 1965. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome he finished 22nd in qualifying with 1.95 metres. He also competed at the 1961 Summer Universiade. On 7 October 1962 in Merano he set an Austrian record of 2.03 metres, which lasted until Sepp Zeilbauer cleared 2.04 metres in Helsinki in 1971.

After his competitive career Donner became a journalist. He worked first for the Express and then headed the business section of the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, and he received the Eduard Haas prize for business journalism. He was managing director of the advertising agency MMS before founding the trade magazine publisher a3 in 1974. The company grew successfully and expanded early into several countries in Eastern Europe. Donner led it as managing director until it was sold in 2000.

Donner remained close to athletics throughout his business career and was a regular, critical observer at Austrian championships and the indoor meetings at Vienna's Ferry Dusika Stadium. In 1994 he succeeded Erika Strasser as president of the Austrian Athletics Federation (ÖLV) and held the post until 2000. He took an active stand against doping, and he also held roles with the European Athletic Association and the IAAF. In later years he spoke out about the state of Austrian athletics and the shortage of usable training facilities in Vienna. In 2024 he joined a gathering of Austrian athletics legends, including Rudi Klaban and Gunnar Prokop, at the national championships in Linz.

Helmut Donner died on 30 October 2026, aged 85, after a long and serious illness. The place of death was not reported. The Kronen Zeitung announced his death on 31 October in an article by Olaf Brockmann, and his club DSG Wien published a tribute calling him an icon of Austrian athletics and a club legend. The German athletics site leichtathletik.de also reported that Austrian athletics was in mourning. Olympedia lists his death on 30 October 2026. Funeral arrangements had not been reported at the time of writing.

Donner's two metre jump in 1959 is remembered as a landmark in Austrian athletics, and his national record of 2.03 metres stood for nine years. He combined that sporting history with a long career in journalism and publishing and six years at the head of the national federation, where he was known for opposing doping. The Kronen Zeitung wrote that the athletics family would always remember him.