by Herbie Sykes
SYLVIA
My dad’s hobby was drumming, and he’d go off and play for the American soldiers in the officers’ mess. He was also a sort of entrepreneur, which you had to be to make ends meet. He traded in coffee, and he combined that with the music. So he was always wheeling and dealing, and I guess that one way or another he was around clubs quite a lot.
My mum was a hairdresser, so she was on her feet all week. By the weekend she tended to be quite tired, and she wasn’t much for staying out dancing. My dad was, though. They’d go out on a Saturday night, and she’d have to beg him to come home at a reasonable hour.
My grandparents didn’t have a particularly good relationship with him. He wasn’t the son-in-law they’d hoped for, but I was just a child and I didn’t understand any of that. I got on well with him and we had fun together. On a Sunday afternoon we’d go to the café to dance. I’d dance with my little brother, and we used to make out that he was taking care of me.
So I think I had a good childhood, yes. I was happy at school and at home, and life was full of fun. I guess that was just my nature.
DIETER
I loved sport, and the two most popular sports were football and cycling. There was always a great bike-racing tradition around Chemnitz, and always lots of big champions. Twice a year they would hold a big evening criterium, and 30,000 would turn out to watch. All the best riders would be there, and they were heroes. Like all the boys in my school I would try to get their autographs, and of course I dreamed of being like them one day. Everyone did.
DIETER
Everybody followed the bike races, and the biggest of all was the Peace Race. It was a two-week stage race and it always started at the beginning of May. It ran between Berlin, Warsaw and Prague, and the route would be rotated annually. So one year it would start in Poland, the next Czechoslovakia, and then the GDR. It crossed the three borders, and that was the whole point of it. It was all about disseminating the message of peace, and demonstrating that through socialism different states could live side by side in harmony. In that sense it was much more important than a traditional bike race.
It had started in 1948. After the war there were tensions between Warsaw and Prague about how to manage their German populations. A group of sports journalists sat down and talked about how sport could help to resolve the problems. The idea had been to organise a boxing tournament, but blokes hitting each other didn’t really work as a symbol of peaceful co-existence. Then somebody suggested a bike race linking the two capitals. They’d both been devastated by the war, but now the cyclists would act as couriers, delivering the message of peace. It was a beautiful idea.
That first year there were two races running simultaneously,3 Warsaw to Prague and vice versa. They started on International Workers’ Day and they invited teams from other socialist countries as well. So Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia all took part. So what had started out as an idea to build bridges between the Poles and the Czechs was extended to all the countries of the Soviet Bloc.
TÄVE
I used to ride a bike, and I really enjoyed it. Then I learned about this race which went from Warsaw to Prague. I was fascinated by it, by the fact that they could ride so far and that a bike race could cross international borders. So in 1949 I started to enter races around Magdeburg, just on a regular bike. People started telling me I was good, and that I ought to get a racing bike. I’d say, ‘But how am I going to be able to afford one of those?’ You couldn’t work more and get more, so I thought about it seriously and realised that if I saved I might be able to build one over time.
In 1950 the organisers renamed it the ‘Peace Race’, and it adopted Picasso’s white dove as its emblem. The leader’s jersey carried it as its symbol, and I remember thinking that was a beautiful idea. The basic tenet was that it didn’t distinguish according to ideology, creed or religion, and that Europeans had to set history aside and find ways to forgive.
DIETER
The GDR Cycling Federation wasn’t in the UCI, so they asked the organising committee if they could send a team. I’m not sure how popular that was in Poland and Czechoslovakia, but whether they liked it or not the GDR people were their comrades now. The event was about showcasing the humanistic values of communism to the entire world, and tolerance was at the heart of that. The English sent a team as well, and that was very significant.4
KLAUS
It was a Polish journalist who first had the balls to invite the GDR team to Prague–Warsaw. Prior to that Germans hadn’t been welcome, and millions of Poles were saying they didn’t want Germans there. It was a big problem for them, but this guy said, ‘No! We have to make a start.’
When we were in Katowice there was a gala dinner. Somebody came up to me and said, ‘Please Klaus, you have to leave the table immediately. Just go!’ I didn’t understand why, but I did as I was asked and went outside. Afterwards they came out and explained what had happened. There was a very well-known Polish actress there, who had survived Auschwitz. She had sworn never to sit at the same table as a German. If she had heard that I was German she’d have said, ‘Either he goes or I go.’
That was what we were up against.
DIETER
In 1952 they announced that the Peace Race was coming to the GDR, and that from here on in it would be Warsaw–Berlin–Prague. They said there would be a stage finish in Chemnitz, and the following day the race would actually pass through Flöha. Everybody was really looking forward to it, and I think that the anticipation of it coming is one of my first real cycling memories.
It fascinated me, just as it fascinated everybody else. At school we’d make prizes for the competitors, and have lessons about the countries they came from. Factories would contribute things as well, because everyone was expected to show their respect and solidarity for the riders. The GDR riders were superstars, real heroes. They were portrayed as shining examples of sportsmanship, and of understanding between different peoples.
The thing to bear in mind is that it was the first big international sporting event to be hosted in the GDR. So the reason that people were so passionate about it was linked to the popularity of cycling, but also to the fact that they were no longer pariahs. The Peace Race conferred legitimacy on the GDR as a state, and I suppose it made us feel like we belonged.
The race was jointly organised by the communist party newspapers in each country, and for us that was Neues Deutschland. They used it to disseminate the message that they were peaceful countries, that only socialism could deliver that peace, but that Bonn and Washington were intent on undermining it.
They wanted to demonstrate that the GDR people and government totally rejected capitalism, and were blameless for what the Nazis had done. The old Germany had been responsible for the war, and the people and values which had created fascism were still prevalent in the west. So in that sense it was paradoxical. It was a race about peace, but also about war. There was a new enemy now, NATO, and a new struggle. There was a propaganda war to be won, and to do that they needed powerful slogans.
People referred to it as the ‘Tour de France of the East’, and I suppose there were practical similarities. The Peace Race was much more important than the Tour to the local populations, though obviously the Tour was much bigger internationally.
There was nothing with the altitude or romance of the Alps and Pyrenees, but then again the race took place in Central Europe at the beginning of May. It crossed the Ore Mountains on the Czech/German border, and sometimes the Harz as well. You never knew what the weather would be like, and sometimes it would be absolutely atrocious, sub-zero. A lot of the roads were cobbled, and many of them were still in really poor condition. So you’d see higher instances of punctures and mechanical failures, and that made the racing really difficult to predict. Invariably it was a real battle, and it wasn’t as tactical as professional racing in the west.
The main difference was that there was no professional sport in socialist countries, so it was an amateur even
t. Then it lasted two weeks as opposed to three, and the stages themselves tended to be shorter. Everyone was invited, and the general idea was that young people from each of the continents would ride in fellowship. You had the greatest champions from the three host countries riding alongside genuine amateurs from places like Finland and Albania. Some of them were absolutely hopeless, to be honest, and they’d lose hours on almost every stage. It didn’t matter, though, because unlike the Tour there was no time limit.
DIETER
Anyway, the stage to Chemnitz took place on VE Day. It was a national holiday and so the crowds were huge, but it’s most famous because it was the first time the race went up the ‘Steep Wall of Meerane’. It was a wide, straight, cobbled hill of 340 metres, with an 11 per cent gradient. Thousands of people gathered there because you could see them approaching, and you could watch them ride pretty much all the way to the top. Meerane always blew the race to bits, and it became the most emblematic climb in the history of the Peace Race.
I suppose technically you could liken it to the Koppenberg or the Mur de Grammont, the big climbs in the Tour of Flanders. Bear in mind that they didn’t have the bikes for climbs like that back then, and they certainly didn’t have the gears. So the first challenge was just to get over it, and that was extremely hard for the genuine amateurs. Then you always had vast crowds, so psychologically it was a key moment. It became a symbol of the Peace Race in the same way the Stelvio was for the Giro, or Galibier for the Tour. Ask just about anybody from the GDR about the Peace Race and there are two things they will remember: the theme music and the Steep Wall of Meerane.
Jan Veselý had the jersey the day the race came to Chemnitz. There was a split in the peloton, though, and the English had three riders in the breakaway. Ian Steel5 took the yellow jersey, and all the big favourites lost ten minutes. Steel kept the jersey all the way to Prague and the English won the team prize. They may have been just amateurs at home, but they were extremely famous in the GDR. In fact, Ian Steel was a household name.
IAN
We were just six young British cyclists, and we had no understanding whatsoever of what we were getting into. None of us had ever flown before, so the idea of travelling to Warsaw and riding a stage race across Europe was magical.
We went to a big gala reception before the race, and that’s where it dawned on us. All the Eastern Bloc teams were immaculately turned out. They were all in blazers and ties, but we were pretty much in our civvies. We looked like a bunch of tail-end Charlies.
I’d say that I have three abiding memories of the Peace Race. The thing that most struck us all was the fellowship between the riders. I rode the Tour and the Vuelta later on, but they were totally different. At the Peace Race you were competing against one another, but it was implicit that you also looked out for one another. There was no doping as far as I know, and there was a real sense of community and sportsmanship.
Then the amount of spectators; there seemed to be seas of people everywhere. I never saw anything like it in cycling, or in any other sporting event. I’d been used to riding amateur races in Britain, and as often as not there was nobody watching. People back home had not the slightest understanding of how big a race this was, and there were no British cycling journalists there to inform them. The only media was a guy from the Socialist Worker, the communist party newspaper.
Above all I remember Warsaw. It was seven years on from the war but most of it was still in ruins. Britain had never been invaded, so we’d had no perception whatsoever of the degree of devastation. It was almost total, and I think we were all genuinely shocked by what we saw there. They were at pains to show us what the Nazis had done, but also to demonstrate how they were building a new future. They took us to see a brand new cinema built entirely from rubble, and they were immensely proud of that.
So we hadn’t imagined the sheer scale of it, but we soon realised how much it meant to the communist bloc teams. We had the best of everything, but at the same time there was also this terrible hardship. As I said, people in the west had absolutely no idea.
FRANK
We flew to Copenhagen, and then on to Warsaw. We were met off the plane by a great phalanx of people, given flowers, treated like kings. Then there was an armoured escort through Warsaw, and a very grand civic reception in a hotel. We all felt a bit out of place in our bomber jackets, but, we joined the queue to meet Marshal Rokossovsky, the Commander of the Soviet forces in Poland. The protocol was that he stood behind a desk, and when it was your turn you’d salute him. Then he’d knock back his Vodka, and off you went. He must have been pretty sloshed by the end, because there were sixteen teams!
Our problem was that we couldn’t work out what you were supposed to say. They just seemed to bark something, then he’d knock the vodka back. Anyway Les Scales chirped up in his cockney accent. He said, ‘Let’s say “bollocks”’, and so that’s what we did. We said ‘bollocks’, with military precision, to the most dangerous man in Poland.
The opening ceremony was about the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen. The stadium was huge, and it was full of people. There were gymnastic displays, marching bands, flags … Then you had huge banners with Stalin on them, and the Polish guy, Bierut.6 Everywhere we went in Poland he was there, and everywhere we went in Czechoslovakia there was another guy. Anyway, the ceremony seemed to go on for hours, and then suddenly they released 1,000 white doves and we were off. It was all a bit much to take in, to be honest. I was twenty-three years old and I’d been working as a plumber. I’d got a job in a bike shop so as I could get a bit more time off, and here I was being treated like a superstar!
The roads were long and straight, and as often as not they were lousy. They were usually brick, laid in a herringbone design. We’d come from the sedate world of British cycling, so we were a bit naïve. There was no quarter, and you’d to fight like hell for a wheel. Then there were echelons all over the road, and we’d never experienced them before. We learned very quickly that we had to race aggressively.
I seem to remember that there were always thousands of miners, their faces black with coal dust. One minute you’d be riding past these huge steelworks, or brickworks or whatever, and the next thing you’d be in the middle of nowhere on these pan-flat country roads.
FRANK
It was a huge shock to the Eastern Europeans that we won it. We didn’t get any money, but there were prizes galore. Each team car had a two-to three-tonne truck with a wooden crate on top, and that was where they kept the prizes we’d won. I remember that everyone got a Carl Zeiss camera, and then there were radios, briefcases, crystal, you name it. We even won some sort of outboard motor, though I haven’t the faintest idea why, even to this day. It was reported that Ian was going to get a car, and that we’d be getting a Jawa motorbike each for having won the blue jersey.7 That never materialised, though.
When we were in Prague there was this strange climate. There was a bloke working at the hotel who’d been in Edinburgh before the war. He was a real nice chap but he was really sheepish when he spoke with us, like he was always watching his back. We found out later that he’d been hauled in for interrogation. People were really friendly but they’d say, ‘Things are terrible here. You’re always being watched and you can be arrested just for talking to the wrong person.’
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
The race is organised as part of the celebrations for May Day, the international holiday of the working people, during which the peoples of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic celebrate the anniversary of the days when they were liberated from the hardship and misery of Nazi occupation by the invincible Soviet Army, led by Stalin’s genius. Thus, besides the sporting mission of the race, it is also emphasised that its value lies in the strengthening of friendly relations not only between the participating countries, but in the consolidation of peaceful co-existence between all nations. ‘In the
name of fraternity of nations, friendship and peace’ is the dominating slogan of the race. […]
The importance of the race became even more prominent after the fifth edition, when the course led from Warsaw to Berlin to Prague, 2,050 kilometres long. Thus it passed for the first time through the GDR, where the working people, under the leadership of President Wilhelm Pieck, are building the foundations of a new, peace-loving Germany. Millions of working people, standing along the route throughout the GDR, clearly demonstrated that the overwhelming majority are for peace, for the democratic unity of the country, and against the revanchist policy of the Krupps and the former Hitlerite generals.
The importance of the race is further strengthened by the fact that progressive sportsmen from capitalist countries are annually strengthening the ranks of the racers. The history of the race is glorious. Both victory and participation therefore represent the highest distinction achievable in their sporting life […]
Reprinted from ‘Six years of the International Peace Race’, 1 May 1953
FRANK
British cycling was split into two groups, the NCU and the BLRC. The NCU was affiliated to the UCI, but it was old-fashioned. They didn’t agree with mass-start racing, and just rode time trials. The BLRC had started out as a splinter group for people who wanted to race our bikes like they did on the Continent. So our riding the Peace Race was nothing to do with politics, and we couldn’t have cared less about them. We just wanted to ride our bikes, and we could only do that in non-UCI races.
