My latest project is a bit of an unusual one, and would have to most likely be a one-off special type race. We've seen the talk of the resurrection of the Deutschlandtour as a short race with the aim of expanding back to the 9-day format in a few years' time, and that's all well and good. But the Deutschlandtour always had one problem that I keep coming back to: far too much of the time, the race tried to be a miniature GT, along the lines of the Dauphiné, the Tour de Suisse or, in recent years (post-the end of the Deutschlandtour) the Tour of California. While the territory covered by those races in whole or in part lends itself to a one-week race with soaring, high mountain passes, long time trials and essentially being a GT in one week, that always rang false with Germany, because there's so much variety in the landscape that hopping over the border into Austria in order to generate Tour-like mountain stages rang a bit false. Once in a while, yes, but the race could have been a lot more varied than it was. Another thing about the Deutschlandtour is that even though it ran sporadically post-war, and the ten years of running from 1999 to 2008 were the longest period of consecutive running it has ever had, as the interest in the race has tended to primarily follow periods of German success. After the initial post-war races ceased in 1952, only two editions ran until Didi Thurau's successes led to a resurrection of the race in the late 70s; Thurau himself winning the 1979 return edition, but after four races it petered out again, only to return in the late 90s following the successes of Jan Ullrich and Erik Zabel.
An interesting thing to note, however, is that Germany was of course divided during much of this period, and the 'other' Germany, whose race was not called the Deutschlandrundfahrt or similar, but reflected the divided nature of the country. It was the DDR-Rundfahrt, and it ran consistently, unlike its counterpart in the Bundesrepublik. When the Deutschlandtour was resurrected in the 90s, it was very interesting that while the race took the DDR-Rundfahrt's spot on the calendar (late August-early September) and the interest in the race had mainly been spurred by riders from the new Bundesländer, the race rather spurned the former East, often using it just for one stage, or none at all.
To the East Germans, however, cycling had been a much bigger deal than it had been for those in the West. While not the institution that the Peace Race was, the DDR-Rundfahrt was a big part of late summer, especially immediately following the World Championships, where local heroes would want to show off newly-won amateur rainbows. The race began in 1949 as the Ostzonen-Rundfahrt, won by prominent pre-war racer Max Bartoskiewicz despite a wartime injury that left his arms unequal in length and affected his balance. After the outright establishment of the DDR, the race grew and ran almost uninterrupted (it was not held in 1960 and 1964 because of the Olympics, and in 1969 and 1970 following the unrest in 1968) until the fall of the Berliner Mauer. A combination of brutal cobbled roads, concreted Plattenwege, air pollution, short and mid-length climbs and tough time trialling made for a tough race that often favoured great day racers and hardmen; the most successful racers at the DDR-Rundfahrt were both amateur World Champions, and both in fact won it in their newly won rainbow stripes at one point - DDR superhero and most popular athlete of all time in the country Gustav-Adolf "Täve" Schur won the race in 1954, 1955, 1959 and 1961, and 1982 amateur World Champion Bernd Drogan, perhaps the best East German racer never to win the Friedensfahrt, took the GC in his home Tour in 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1982. Uwe Ampler won three times, in 1986, 1987 and 1989, and given his dominance of the Eastern Bloc in that era may well have joined them had the race continued, but as it is we will never know.
Following the initial period of excitement and elation that followed Wiedervereinigung, however, there was a trend that emerged in the early 90s in the new Bundesländer, which you'll all be familiar with as it's grown into a famous thing - so-called
Ostalgie, a rose-tinted look back at the DDR fuelled at least in part by the perceived arrogant, condescending attitudes of citizens of the BRD towards their eastern counterparts and mockery of those products, habits and cultural items that had become the creature comforts of the east. As a result, many brands and items of the former East have been either resurrected or have seen resurgences in fortune and many still exist today. As a one-off special edition of the future Deutschlandtour, therefore, I present a one-week
Rundfahrt der Ostalgie, taking in various memories of the East.
So, who would be interested in such a thing? After all, the riders who trained in the old East are now all retired - the likes of Zabel, Ullrich and Jens Voigt. But there are still many children of East Germany around - André Greipel is one, who has talked of dreaming of the Friedensfahrt as a child and his reverence for Olaf Ludwig, Uwe Ampler and co. in his youth. There are many riders who came up through German feeder teams that sprung up from former eastern clubs such as the Thüringer Energie Team and LKT Team Brandenburg. Marcel Kittel's father Mathias was a successful rider in East Germany who won the Berlin-Angermünde-Berlin one-day race in 1981, while Simon Geschke's father Jürgen was an excellent track rider who won three World Championships and an Olympic silver in the tandem sprint along with a World Championship gold in the individual sprint a few years later. And there are plenty of the old timers who could be persuaded to make an appearance. Olaf Ludwig appears annually at the women's Thüringen Rundfahrt as it passes near his hometown of Jena, Uwe Ampler (whose son Rick is also an active rider albeit seemingly without a pro team in 2016) could be approached (his father Klaus is also one of the most famous cycling sons of the DDR, and only died earlier this year), Raab, Jentzsch and Drogan are still around, maybe Heiko Salzwedel could persuade a strong British representation (hmmm), obviously the teams like CCC and Verva would have interest, and despite now being in his 80s you could probably guarantee at least some interest from Täve Schur.
For the sake of nostalgia, hopefully the now-fairly-nominal-in-circulation
Neues Deutschland could get involved in the organization process, but ideally we'd have a range of former DDR marques to cover the jersey sponsorship. Here's my ideal world situation.
Yellow jersey (GC):
Vita Cola. Now rebranded after being brought back with
hip retro packaging, the DDR Cola actually outsells Coca-Cola and Pepsi in Thüringen and is arguably the biggest success story of post-Wende DDR brands.
Green jersey (activity classification):
Fit Spülmittel - remaining popular in the region to date, the DDR's favourite washing brand.
Red jersey (mountains classification):
Nudossi, the 'eastern Nutella', a chocolate hazelnut paste that has survived the influx of western goods.
White jersey (U23 classification):
Zeha Berlin, the former sportswear brand that manufactured most of the East German kit. Since reunification they have rebranded themselves as an upmarket retro footwear company.
Blue jersey (combination classification):
Rondo Kaffee, a coffee brand that has risen back up again to become the brand of choice in much of the former DDR.
Anyway, on to the cycling!
Stage 1a: Rund um Rügen, 117km
The race starts with a split stage on the northeastern island of Rügen. As foreign travel in the days of the DDR, especially early on, was difficult, holidays for East Germans were often taken internally, and often in organized locations arranged by the FDGB (collection of trade unions). With its pristine Baltic coast, chalk cliffs and scenic alleys, Rügen was one of the most popular resort locations as a result and therefore its central town of Bergen auf Rügen has impressive transport links for a town its size. It also benefits as a cycling location from being one of very few locations in the northern third of Germany as a whole, let alone the former East, with climbs worthy of categorization. This short semitappe linking the island's two largest towns is, however, mostly flat and should therefore be completed comfortably inside 3 hours.
The first half of the stage is a very flat loop before returning to Bergen via a short, gradual climb, and in the second half of the stage things get a bit more interesting. First we pass the famous neo-classical
Circus von Putbus, then we head eastwards towards the island's southeastern corner which is a biosphere reserve. There are a number of scenic cobbled alleys here, however unfortunately many of them are dead ends or would prove impossible to make a reasonable circuit without making riders double back on themselves far too soon for it to reasonably be safe. With just under 50km to go, though, the first real challenge arrives, as in Lancken-Granitz we turn off the main road onto a
cobbled alley which in turn becomes the partially-cobbled ascent to the Jagdschloß Granitz, built on the Tempelberg, the highest point in this part of the island.
The descent is
narrow but otherwise not a problem, and it is mercifully short. We then descend into
Binz, a picture perfect seaside resort on one of two isthmuses that sit each side of the large inland Jasmunder Bodden. We then go across the Sassnitz port area to the western side of the Jasmund region, before a 2km cobbled stretch from Neuhof to Sagard which
isn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination. Here there's 24km remaining, before we head back across the peninsula to Sassnitz, before a quick loop including a gradual but slightly more sustained climb to allow the attackers something to work for as we head into the natural park around the scenic, historic white cliffs of Jasmund that so inspired the works of Caspar David Friedrich and will give us some glorious helicam footage on day one of the Rundfahrt der Ostalgie.
This fairly benign but not inconsiderably climb ends just over 9km from the line, after which it's a fast downhill false flat back into the island's biggest resort town, Sassnitz, for the finish on the seafront.
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