OBITUARY: RYSZARD SZURKOWSKI
On February 1, the greatest of all Eastern Bloc riders passed away aged 75. Winner of four editions of the Peace Race, Poland’s Ryszard Szurkowski dominated amateur cycling in the 1970s. Procycling reflects on the triumphs and tragedies of the ‘Merckx of
We celebrate the life and achievements of Poland’s greatest ever cyclist, who sadly died recently
Cycling is a European sport. But between 1945 and 1989, there were two Europes. They were divided ideologically and, from the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, practically. In cycling, the division was absolute. In the capitalist west, it was a commercial enterprise. It was predicated upon and conditioned by financial imperative, the professional peloton a fastmoving billboard. The Tours of Italy and France were (and still are) its greatest theatres but also its most opulent shop windows. The Giro d’Italia immortalised Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali, while the annual threeweek pantomime which was Anquetil and Poulidor became the highlight of the French summer.
On the other side of the divide however, cycling as a profession was anathema to communism. It couldn’t be contaminated by monetary gain, because in common with all Soviet Bloc sports – and with the prevailing Olympic credo – cycling was for amateurs. It had no interest in selling newspapers, toothpaste or lifestyle choices, because it aspired to an altogether higher principle.
For the Warsaw Pact countries, the Worlds and Olympics were the pinnacle of single-day achievement. However their showcase event, the two-week Peace Race, was bigger even than the Tour when it came to public engagement. Schools and businesses closed when it came by, because the ruling party decreed it. They organised the race, and every citizen had a responsibility to build socialism. The Peace Race was a public holiday, and not for nothing did they call it ‘The Race of Millions’.
Traversing central Europe between Berlin, Warsaw and Prague, it was a thing of genuine beauty. Conceived in 1948 and mandated to unify the populations of Poland and Czechoslovakia, it was an instant success. East Germany was added in 1952, the idea to bestow socialist fellowship on communities torn asunder by capitalist slaughter. And while Westerners made lazy reference to the ‘Tour de France of the East’, the reality was different. The Tour was a capitalist construct, and capitalism had caused two world wars and untold suffering. The Peace Race, on the other hand, represented sporting utopia. Its riders were couriers of peace, and they understood that. There were no time limits, any nation could send a team and, early on at least, the peloton really was a brotherhood.
Cycling was as popular in the east as it was in the west, and the Peace Race superstars Jan Veselý and Täve Schur were sporting deities in Czechoslovakia and East Germany respectively. For the most talented Western European youngsters, it was the school of hard knocks. The racing was hard but fair, the roads implacable and the Central European weather biblical on occasion.
It was cycling in the raw, and a good showing was a passport to a professional contract.
In 1954 the Soviets sent a team for the first time. They became the common enemy, and the dynamic in and around the race began to mutate. Stanisław Królak’s 1956 win was a case in point. It was a major geopolitical happening, and it’s indicative of just how important the Peace Race was to the local populations.
Bolesław Bierut, Poland’s ‘little Stalin’, had just died. The Poles wanted a more liberal leader, but the hardliners in Moscow were demanding more of the same. Peace Race legend has it that Królak whacked a Russian rider with his pump, the cycling equivalent of resisting an occupying force.
Królak insisted that he never actually hit the guy, but nobody wanted to hear that. The legend of the pump was hardwired into the Polish collective consciousness and they came out in their millions to celebrate his win. It was only a bike race, but it’s a fact that the groundswell of nationalist sentiment he provoked contributed to the ‘Poznań June’ uprising. Soviet tanks quelled that just as they had the 1953 insurrection in East Berlin, and as they would the Hungarian Revolution that fall. However over 50 Polish patriots were killed, and an ‘all for one and all against the Russians’ mentality pervaded the race just as it pervaded everyday life. We in the west paid it no particular heed, but this was a bike race whose import transcended the usual cycling hearts and flowers. Those two weeks in May really mattered. They mattered a lot.
Królak remained the only Polish winner, so in 1965 the Federation in Warsaw engaged a new coach. Henryk Łasak had ridden the Peace Race twice; twice he’d been on the receiving end, and he understood that the Soviets and East Germans were professionals in all but name. Their riders were supported by the best sports scientists and equipment, and Łasak insisted that his team be similarly resourced. He formed an elite group of 12, half of whom would qualify
Szurkowski was a wonderfully elegant rider and a naturalborn racer. He had a terrific engine, and there was nobody he couldn’t outsprint
for the race. He introduced warm-weather winter training camps in Algeria and France and when the racing began, split them into two groups of six. Competition intensified dramatically, and with it performance.
In the Peace Race, the blue jersey of the team competition was highly prized. Communism was all about the collective, and sport was a mirror on society. There had been a serious discussion, some years earlier, of jettisoning the yellow jersey altogether, because by definition it promoted individualism over altruism. It hadn’t happened – this was cycling, after all - but in delivering Poland’s first ever blue jersey in 1967, Łasak was hailed as a visionary. The following year his team won it again, and added three stages for good measure.
As punishment for the Prague Spring (and for fear the Soviet riders might be assaulted), the 1969 race missed Czechoslovakia. As a consequence the Dutch, the Brits and a host of others also missed it, and the result was a reduced peloton. Before, there had been 20 six-man national teams, but now 14 teams of seven set out from Warsaw.
Łasak’s seventh man was an angular, softly-spoken 23-year-old. Encouraged by his brother, Ryszard Szurkowski had started riding in Milicz, a tiny market town in Lower Silesia. He’d joined a club in nearby Wrocław, and had immediately helped himself to the Polish cyclo-cross championship. He was a wonderfully elegant rider and a natural-born racer. He had a terrific engine, and there was nobody he couldn’t outsprint. Here he galloped to stage 2 in Łòdź, led the race for a week, and came with 42 seconds of winning it. Łasak famously stated that he’d emulate Królak the following year, and nobody knew cycling like Łasak.
The 1970 Peace Race rolled out of Prague. Szurkowski won the opener to picture-postcard Karlovy Vary, and team-mate Zygmunt Hanusik sprinted home in Plzenň. Szurkowski and Zenon Czechowski won stages 3 and 4 and then, when the race crossed into Poland, Szurkowski delighted his old clubmates by winning in Wrocław. Five stages, all won by Poles, and ultimately they helped themselves to nine of the 15. Five of them finished in the top 10. Szurkowski ran away with the GC and the points, the blue jersey was a formality, and the golden era of Polish cycling was up and running. Łasak had synthesised it, but ‘King Ryszard’ would be its standard bearer and its poster-boy.
Later that year, he famously gifted his bike to Hanusik during the Polish nationals. Hanusik would win, but Szurkowski would be awarded a UNESCO Fair Play Award. He was straight-backed and scrupulously fairminded and, when he dominated the 1971 Peace Race, irrefutably the best amateur rider in the world, and the most popular man in Poland. Little wonder he became their first cycling sports personality of the year, and this at a time of unprecedented success for Poland and its sportowcy. The economy was booming, living standards rising, and in 1972 Polish athletes accounted for no fewer than seven Olympic golds. The fencer Witold Woyda delivered two, while the midfield schemer Kazimierz Deyna dominated the football. Szurkowski, Deyna and Woyda were the sporting emissaries of the Soviet Bloc’s most progressive, most successful country.
On 5 January 1973, Łasak departed Warsaw with three of his riders. He was taking Janusz Kowalski, Jerzy Żwirko and Krzysztof Stec to a training camp in the Tatra mountains, but lost control of his Fiat 125P on a treacherous descent south of Krakòw. The left side of the car was crushed by an oncoming bus. Łasak and young Żwirko didn’t stand a chance.
Life, like death, goes on, and the Polish delegation resolved to honour their memory at the 1973 Peace Race. Here a new star would make his debut. Stanisław Szozda was 22, and he was rock ‘n’ roll. But for all the smoking, drinking and womanising, he had the heart of a lion. Szozda was a bit of a shit-kicker and a lot of an iconoclast (the opposite of mannered, rational Szurkowski), and he made no secret of what he wanted: King Ryszard’s crown, and he’d do whatever it took to get it. Easier said than done, and in the event Szurkowski kept him at arm’s length. Szozda had to settle for two stage wins and a runner-up medal, so now Poland had a Peace Race one-two and another blue jersey. It also had a ferocious cycling rivalry to call its own. Szozda crowed long and loud when he outgunned his nemesis to become Polish champion later that summer, and cycling’s popularity seemed boundless.
The 1973 Worlds were legendary. The pro race saw a four-up sprint between Gimondi, Merckx,
Szurkowski gifted his bike to Hanusik during the Polish nationals. Hanusik won, but Szurkowski would be awarded a UNESCO Fair Play award
Ocaña and Maertens. Gimondi beat Merckx that broiling Barcelona afternoon, and the how and why of it has been animating Belgian cycling ever since. It’s one of those cycling days, but it’s only half the story. As we know, there were two planets cycling during the Cold War, and they estimate that some 15 million Poles tuned in for the amateur race. Szurkowski and Szozda escaped with a Frenchman and a Dane, and on the final lap Szurkowski just rode away. Szozda won the sprint for silver, and later the two of them teamed up for another rainbow jersey. The 100km TTT was the most Stakhanovite of all cycling events, and that was reflected in its popularity. Over two gut-wrenching, excruciating hours, Messrs Szurkowski, Szozda, Lis and Mytnik put the Soviets – and all the rest – to the sword to claim a stunning victory.
In the west, Merckx was winning everything. It was becoming boring, frankly, and the public and race organisers wanted something new. Specifically they were wanting for Szurkowski, the ‘Merckx of the East’, to add colour to a scene which seemed to be atrophying. The Paris-Nice organisers made their race an open event and Szurkowski, only half-fit, podiumed in three of the stages. It ought to have been the start of something big, but the professional sponsors were against it. They threatened to down tools and that was the end of it. Moreover for King Ryszard there was trouble – lots of it – brewing at home.
By now, Szurkowski’s relationship with Szozda was toxic. While the rivalries between Coppi and Bartali and Anquetil and Poulidor had remained more or less civil, theirs was genuine and visceral. They couldn’t be around one another, and absent Łasak it was every man for himself. It was clear that they couldn’t both ride the Peace Race, and ultimately Szurkowski abdicated. He’d had a gutful and while Szozda won six stages and the GC, he trundled around the Milk Race and the Tour de l’Avenir.
That summer he began the Worlds in Montreal as the short-priced favourite, but the enmity between him and Szozda was his undoing. They only had eyes for one another, and the chief beneficiary was Janusz Kowalski. He’d survived the crash which had killed Łasak, and there was a certain poignancy in his winning here. Kowalski, however, wasn’t the rainbow jersey the Poles wanted. He was a nice guy and very tidy rider, but he wasn’t Szurkowski and he wasn’t Szozda.
Szurkowski returned to the Peace Race the following year. He added an unprecedented fourth win, but he and his team-mates shared little more than a Polish passport. The idealism and optimism which had characterised the race of peace was evaporating, and post-Łasak Polish cycling was increasingly beset by petty, internecine squabbling. The whole thing was turning ugly and so, aged just 29, Ryszard Szurkowski called time on the race that had made him.
He continued racing until his mid-30s, but the golden age of Polish cycling was over. The Peace Race ran for 14 more editions before the Berlin Wall fell; the East Germans and Soviets won 13 of them. The exception was Poznań’s Lech Piasecki, who had grown up watching Czesław Lang (now organiser of the Tour of Poland), and like all Poles of his age Lang was inspired by King Ryszard. It’s a line which leads directly to Kwiatkowski and Niewiadoma.
Away from the bike, Szurkowski was intelligent and considered. He was even-handed as a coach, but some felt him a little anodyne. His latter years were marked by tragedy. His son Norbert died in the 9/11 tragedy, and there were two failed marriages. He and Szozda made up, but Szozda succumbed to cancer in 2013 aged just 62. Five years later, Szurkowski took part in the Rund um Köln with a group of friends. He had a terrible crash and was wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life.
The ‘Merckx of the East’ appellation is facile, but also inaccurate. Their respective cycling paradigms were completely different, and so too the way they raced. Merckx was a wrecking ball of a cyclist, Szurkowski a rapier. Eddy won everything, everywhere, while for Szurkowski the Peace Race was the only show in town. They were as different as the worlds that formed them, as different as the Tour and the Peace Race.
Szurkowski and the race of peace are synonymous, and that tells its own story. He’s widely considered to have been its greatest champion, and yet he only raced it six times. Every Polish male of a certain age remembers him, probably because he was always in yellow. They recall the pride he bestowed and the electricity he generated, because he was bigger than the sport he practiced. Szurkowski defined an era because, for all that he wasn’t a professional racing cyclist, he was a genuinely great one.