The great escape
The story of Degner’s defection
Sixty years ago this week, East German MZ racer Ernst Degner defected to the west – and to mark the anniversary, a brand-new, British-made, 90-minute TV drama documentary is being premiered. The film portrays in more detail than ever the story of motorcycling’s greatest escape, and the tragedy that followed – and MCN has spoken exclusively to its makers. Missile from the East tells the story of rider and engineer Degner’s rise to the top of 125cc GP racing with the pioneering, expansion-chambered MZ, despite the constraints and oppression of East Germany’s communist regime. It recreates his cloak and dagger escape at the 1961 Swedish GP to take his secrets to rivals Suzuki. It also portrays Degner’s subsequent championship win for Suzuki in 1962 before his fortunes spiralled downwards after a near-fatal crash in 1965 at Suzuka, ultimately leading to his early death in Tenerife in 1983, aged just 51. Based not on MCN contributor Mat Oxley’s well-known book version, Stealing Speed, the film instead comes from a collaboration with Team Suzuki author Ray Battersby, whose own book on the story is nearing publication.
It features exclusive interviews with those involved or present at the time including the late Murray Walker (his last), Jimmy Matsumiya – the Suzuki team manager who organized Degner’s escape, Degner’s son Olaf, and many more. It also includes extensive, dramatised reconstructions using historic bikes from the Sammy Miller Museum, Goodwood race circuit and even a reconstruction of the MZ racing team’s workshop.
Ten years in the making, the film is the work of director Justin Stokes, a schoolfriend of Matsumiya’s son, and producer Mike Wells. Missile from the East premiered on Sky Documentaries on Saturday, and is now available on demand.
Stokes and Wells told MCN how it all came about.
Stokes: “The instigation was really meeting Jimmy Matsumiya. I went to school with his son, we met up 15 years later, I mentioned I’d been looking into the story and went to meet Jimmy. It was a brilliant experience because he’s a larger than life character, loves to tell a story and is very vivid with his descriptions. When I got back and played Mike the recording we just thought it could be a great documentary.”
Wells: “Another key relationship was with Ray Battersby. We discussed the project with Ray over a number of years and it became clear he had an equal interest in this particular part of the Suzuki story. Ray’s research is absolutely spot-on. We formed a collaboration and ended up optioning the manuscript Ray has written.
“Mat Oxley’s book (Stealing Speed) was one of the original books we read on the subject. We talked to Mat and there was definitely a will to collaborate. But I think Mat’s particular focus is very much from a motorsport perspective. Our view on the story is that the background is motor racing but fundamentally this is a story about an individual, so we agreed that we’re on slightly different paths, hence the relationship with Ray was a stronger for us.”
Stokes: “Firstly, getting to ‘know’ Degner – simply because he’s not as well documented as he would be today. It’s not like with that recent F1 film Senna where there’s an almost endless archive available. It was a real struggle. We went to all the
normal places but exhausted that quite quickly. Equally, the Stasi qformer East q ermany security serviceqfiles we got hold of q that took about three years. Everything took a long time because it’s buried information. Even getting hold of Olaf q egner was tricky. That took five years because he’s someone who doesn’t trust people to tell the story. q e’s had this story told many times and actually just wants to be left alone. qay is good friends with him, that opened up a connection. We got to know Olaf really well, and that actually changed the whole end of the film. q t the end of the film, he tells us about how he found his father and it’s a very difficult moment. “qeconstructing the era was a challenge, too. We were making it during the height of the pandemic so that was tricky, but it was also actually a joy because we had so much imagery and footage of how the Mq workshop looked, right down to the windows and the kind of benches which the bikes are sat on q those are recreated exactlyq ” The qhero’ bike, meanwhile is an actual period Mq racer q from Sammy Miller’s Museum.
Stokes: “Sammy was absolutely brilliant. We had our Walter Kaaden qMq’s engineering geniusqactor next to the bike and you know that the actual Kaaden would have been touching it and putting it togetherq ”
Wells: “That bike has got qquigi, q x qqq world champqqTaveri’s signature on itq it’s a wonderful thing. It was slightly spineq tingling, actually to have it up on that plinth and lit in our little workshop studioq ”
Stokes: “We couldn’t start that bike and could only use it as a static so when the actor is in qSweden’ on the grid he’s holding that bike and pushes it to bump start but once he’s moving we used a recreated replica, which was a q KW. But also in the background of that gridshot in Sweden we’ve got more Sammy Miller bikes, including an old Bultaco and an Mq.”
Wells: “qecreating that period theme was difficult. We were on a very, very limited budget with very limited resources so qustin had to think very carefully about framing and about how to extract the qessence’ of the time without having the opportunity to shoot massive wide shots.”
A controversial ending
Stokes: “Olaf really opened up the ending for us, as did qay Battersby, who had a cassette tape of an interview with q egner from qqqq. q part from one other shortly after the defection it’s the only recording with q egner we know about. “Within it q egner describes some of the defection, what happened in Sweden with the overqrevving of the engine qq egner, like Maverick q iqales more recently, was accused of deliberately breaking his engine, supposedly to aid his defectionq but he also describes some of the crash which happened at Suzuka which felt like a really emotional part of the story which we needed to include.
“It’s an emotional moment but also very important one to understand his psychology. q ear the start of the film we talk about q egner’s childhood. It was really traumatic. q e was fleeing from qoland, managed to get to East q ermany in the middle of winter with his mother and his sister, his mother dies from pneumonia but he makes it with his sister to East q ermany.
“So he had this really hard upbringing which made him this determined, singleqminded person but at the end he also had trouble communicating with the rest of his family which eventually made him very separated and caused him be on his own in Tenerife.
“q e couldn’t race any more, tried to start a car hire business but he didn’t know how so after a few months let it go. These words are from Olaf. The mystery of it is very much unravelled by Olaf because he told us how he found his father. q e was sent by his mother because everyone was concerned about his dad. So Olaf went to Tenerife. That was a moment that I thought was very, very important.
“But then we qlift’ the back end of the film again with a summary from Murray Walker who talks about what q egner did to the motorcycle industry, how he changed things.” Wells: “We’ve tried to keep away from sensationalism. Some aspects of q egner’s story have been sensationalised and the inclusion of Olaf has given it a very personal slant. Olaf’s testimony really helped us see that we needed to tell the full picture. q fter his extraordinary racing career and extraordinary effort to get his family out of East q ermany, there’s no doubt that q egner was also a slightly tragic figure. I hope people will see we’ve tried to present the truth as we found it and as qay helped us unpick, and hopefully people will feel that they understand q egner a little better as an individual, let alone a champion rider.”
‘Working at the height of the pandemic was a challenge’