Following on from my Peace Race, I have something else in mind that came from ideas I was unable to fit into the Friedensfahrt... and in a moment of shock, awe and possibly horror I am now going to introduce to you a mostly flat race (gulp)!
I have put together a short (four stage) race in a small corner of Germany where mountains are at a premium; hills are far from plentiful, but roads are well suited to difficult racing. This would be a race ideally suited to the early season, preparing riders for the Classics. Ideally, it would fall when Easter is early, because then it can be a preparation race for the biggest Classics as well as tying in with the traditions of its home region as best as possible. That is for this is the
Lausitz Rundfahrt, or perhaps to explain a little more clearly, the
Tour des Sorbengebiets. Well, or possibly
Jězdźić po Łužica/Łužyca in the local tongue. Lusatian Sorbs have been inhabiting this corner of Germany for hundreds of years, and remain there to this day. These are Slavic people, who speak (in ever dwindling numbers) Slavic languages, and have Slavic customs and culture. The official number of Sorbs is now down to 60.000, 40.000 in Oberlausitz and 20.000 in Niederlausitz, and though great Sorbian traditions such as the elegant
easter egg painting live on, many customs die out, increasingly defeated by the dominant German. This has been the case even on those occasions where the Germans have been willing to help - the SED, for example, offered many concessions to Sorbian culture in the DDR, at the same time as inadvertently tearing down community traditions in favour of massive kolkhozes and razing entire villages to make room for lignite quarries.
Those lignite quarries have been a blight on the countryside in the Lausitz, especially in the flatter northern part of it, which lies in Brandenburg (Oberlausitz lies in Saxony). However, since many of those quarries have closed (and all are planned to cease activity by 2020), this former flat, heather-lined land has been converted into the
Lausitzer Seenland, an artificially-created but impressively pretty region with a number of large, open lakes created from the flooding of these quarries, designed to create a lake district comparable to that of the former East Prussia (now mostly lying in Mazuria, in northeastern Poland). By bringing a bicycle race to the Lausitz region, therefore, I hope to draw some attention to the regeneration of this maligned region as well as to the Sorbs and their history and culture; I'm imagining jerseys in the colours of the
Sorbian flag, podium girls in the
traditional Sorbian dress, and so on.
Onwards we go, to stage 1.
Stage 1: Görlitz - Bautzen, 190km
The Lausitz Rundfahrt doesn't have a mountains jersey, though there are a couple of notable climbs on this stage.
We start the race right in the bottom corner of Saxony, in the easternmost town in Germany, Görlitz (
Zhorjelc in Upper Sorbian). This is a divided town, with part of it being on the other side of the Neisse, thus constituting the Polish town of Zgorzelec, as the Oder-Neisse Line formally demarcates the border between the two countries. As a result, there is a distinctly Slavic feel to the town, with Sorbian customs meeting Silesian history, both German and Polish. It also has a very pretty centre, with those great cobbled streets that will warn the riders what is to come this week.
The stage route itself spirals in on itself westwards and takes in a large portion of Oberlausitz on its way. The former DDR has, by and large and tragically for the sport of cycling, gone to great lengths to asphalt most of its old
Kopfsteinpflasterstraßen, but a number still remain, and a few of these have made their way into today's stage. The first is
Muskauer Straße in Niesky, just 20km into the stage. This is not expected to cause any difficulties, however, and for a while the course will be flat as the riders head through some of the lakeland. Most notable here is
Bärwalder See, with the tranquility of the lake and the lush greenery that surrounds it broken up by a vision of the area's industrial past. After 56km it's time for more cobbles, this time in
Lohsa, a town which is progressively becoming an
isthmus in the lakes.
Shortly after this the riders arrive in Hoyerswerda (
Wórjejce), one of the main cities of the region. The centre of town allows for
more cobbles, with
Lange Straße being particularly troublesome in case of bad weather. A few kilometres later there's some less pristine
Kopfsteinpflaster to handle in
Wittichenau. After this there is a 15km lull where blissful tarmac calms the riders as we approach the halfway point in the stage. When we reach the halfway point, we're in Kamenz (
Kamjenc), a
picturesque town that bizarrely last saw professional cycling action in 1999, but most of the centre of town is cobbled, and it is the home of a fairly well-known amateur race called the
Lausitzer Blutenlauf (the metal-as-hell "Lusatian Blood Race") where riders
swoop around the cobbled town. There's also a nice little
cobbled hill, which I have obviously stolen for my race. 12 more kilometres of uphill, no longer cobbled, then follows, until a few more hundred metres of stones in
Pulsnitz. After this it's rolling terrain, including passing
Schloß Rammenau, before we get to Bischofswerda (
Biskupicy), where the riders will take a technical, multi-cornered route through the town centre in order to maximise the amount of time spent on
the cobbles of the city centre. Most of these are
easily manageable even if it rains, so I've thrown in
another climb. At this point there are 64km remaining.
The riders continue eastwards until they reach the southern tip of Obergurig. At this point they turn south, and take on Mönchswalder Berg, by far the biggest climbing obstacle today. At 2km long and 8% average, with a maximum of
15%, it is nothing to be sniffed at. The riders crest this for the first time with 42km remaining, and then it is a rolling circuit that takes them into Bautzen (the capital of Lusatia, known as
Budyšin to the Sorbs), a picturesque city on the Spree decorated with some impressive medieval castles and towers, where some easy cobbles and a couple of wide curves in the city centre take them to the finishing line, outside the imposing
Haus der Sorben, or
Serbski Dom. Then, a final 25km circuit takes in a
final Kopfsteinpflasterstraße in Obergurig, before taking on Mönchswalder Berg once more, this time cresting with 17km remaining, and returning to Bautzen to finish.
This is not a super-tough cobbled stage, and the one key climb isn't enough to create utter carnage, but there is enough to give attackers plenty of scope to try to make things tough for sprinters here. This makes a nice apéritif for the rest of the race too.
Görlitz:
Bautzen:
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