He valued honesty, loyalty, and friendship. He turned every drivers’ meeting into an event with his quips and gestures. Now Dr. Christoph Scholl has passed away. The passionate physician and motorcyclist succumbed to cancer on March 5. He was 78 years old. He will embark on his final journey in one week, on Monday, March 24, 2025, when he will be buried at 1:00 p.m. in Könnern (Saxony-Anhalt).
Christoph Scholl was one of a kind in the motorcycle scene—and certainly one of the most distinctive figures. At first glance, it was sometimes hard to believe that this carefree man had chosen to become a doctor—and just how skilled he was. But appearances were deceiving. He helped countless riders get back on their feet both on and off the racetrack—even me (the author), when I was at the dirt track in Barcelona and couldn’t tell my head from my heels. “Scholli” has treated so many—from hobby riders to IDM greats and Grand Prix stars—everywhere, whether in the hospital or, if necessary, on the kitchen table in his trailer. And in doing so, he’s saved careers.
Christoph Scholl studied medicine, passed his state examination in 1973, and earned his doctorate four years later. The topic of his dissertation was “Ventricular wall function during partial ischemia in anesthetized dogs.” For this, he performed heart surgery on a dog, ligated a blood vessel, measured the parameters, and investigated what could be done to improve cardiac function under these conditions. Scholl graduated with “summa cum laude,” the highest distinction for doctoral dissertations. Other than that, he had never had anything to do with animals.
His passion was racing. Starting in 1994, he worked as a race doctor when he wasn’t racing himself. Having grown up in St. Wendel, he was exposed to motorcycles at an early age. Back then, the racers used to stay with local residents in town. “Back then, the NSU factory team would arrive in three buses and make our backyard their home,” Scholl once recalled, before he competed in his first race himself in 1969—much to his parents’ horror. “They wondered what they’d done wrong.” His father was a high school teacher and had hoped his son would take up a different hobby. But there was no stopping him.
To afford his motorcycles, he worked part-time jobs as a student. He also helped several dental students with key sections of their doctoral theses. Scholl managed to combine his profession with his hobby. In 1991 and 1992, he served as the official team doctor for the HB-Racing Team in the Motorcycle World Championship. He had previously helped out there once before—as a cook and jack-of-all-trades. GP rider Reinhold Roth, who later suffered a serious accident, had already recognized back in 1986 that Scholl was a jack-of-all-trades. If necessary, he could even serve as a bus driver. Aside from the many treatments Scholl performed, he noticed that emotional factors also played a major role in the healing process.
Take, for example, the incident with the pineapple. Scholl had wanted to buy a pineapple from a Maori in the South Seas and offered two dollars as payment. The Maori tipped over the entire cart in response. Scholl had no idea what to do with it all, but the fruit was too good to throw away. He gathered it all up, hauled the fruit back to the hotel, and pressed it in his room overnight. In the end, he had three liters of syrup, which he took with him to Laguna Seca. There, it was destined to go down in history. Scholl was as happy as a little kid.
Rolf Biland from the sidecars was the first to fall. He broke his collarbone. While Scholl was treating him, the Swiss rider kept turning around and asking what smelled so good in the room. Scholl sold it to him as a miracle cure that would really give him a boost. Then he took out the syrup, diluted it with water, and added a splash of isotonic drink. Biland drank it and went on to finish second in practice—despite the fracture and his sling. A few hours later, half the paddock was standing in front of Scholl’s trailer, wanting some of that drink. Scholl remarked at the time, almost regretfully: “If I’d told them that I’d only done it out of desperation because I wanted to help Biland, and that it was concentrated pineapple juice, it would have caused a crisis. But nobody wanted to know that anyway.”
As a longtime pioneer and organizer of the Doc Scholl rider training program, the doctor was truly focused on training. “It doesn’t work to just hop on a motorcycle and open the throttle.” And Scholl was all about a holistic approach: “Nutrition, motivation, concentration, and proper hydration are all part of it.” Despite his playful nature combined with his tremendous rhetorical skills, Scholl always took his work seriously. The Doc was a man in high demand throughout his life. Especially on Mondays, when another race weekend had come to an end. It would have been best if Christoph Scholl could have provided remote diagnoses. When the phone rang, it wasn’t necessarily someone signing up for his training sessions, but rather someone wanting to send X-rays via email.
We will remember Christoph Scholl as a man with heart and soul who stood up for others unconditionally. He had hoped to perhaps do a few laps on the racetrack with a small electric motorcycle over Easter, but that will no longer happen. Our sympathies go out to his wife, Imke, and his son, Julius.