Peace Pedalers

It was V-E day--Liberation Day, in the Communist lingo of East Berlin--and the town was tricked up with solemn-sloganed streamers. "Forward to Peace, Socialism and Understanding Between Peoples" fluttered from the Institute for Planned Economy. "Forward, Not to the Atom Bomb, But to Peace" waved in the breeze over Stalin Allee.* Few stopped to read. Small boys careered through the streets on their bicycles. Crowds surged along the sidewalks searching for vantage points. Any minute the "Peace Race" bicycle riders would pump into view. Any lap of the 1,330-mile grind from Warsaw to Berlin to Prague, Iron Curtain counterpart of the West's lung-busting Tour de France, was guaranteed to be twice as funny as the loudest politician's patriotic spiel.

This year's race, the ninth annual, was no exception. There were 140 riders and 23 teams (14 from countries outside the Soviet bloc) to compete as "national teams" in the long run (twelve days of pedaling, one day's rest). "There isn't one of them who could place in the first 30 in the Tour de France," grumbled a Munich sports editor last week. But, wherever they came from, the cyclists, at least, took the race seriously. And their determination was, as usual, sufficient to make the competition for a big bomb-shaped "peace" cup something less than pacific.

Polish Pratfall. During pre-race physical exams in Warsaw, Russia's Yevgeny Klevtsov grabbed a machine designed to test his grip, squeezed the needle right off the dial and immediately began bawling for a meter that could show just how strong he really was. The grind had hardly begun when a member of the Polish emigre team tried to bump Italian Ace Dino Bruni into the gutter. Bruni kept his balance, but one of his volatile teammates unfastened his bicycle pump and bent it over the Pole's head. Out of Lodz, hell-bent for Stalingrod in the fourth lap, the pack got handlebars tangled, and 25 riders dived into a mass pratfall. Shortly afterwards an East German cyclist soared off the road into a river. The Communists proudly emphasized that on-the-spot first aid was better than at any other international bike race.

The low comedy was provided by a clutch of Albanians and Egyptians. The Albanian bicycles kept falling to pieces, and one of their riders was last seen alongside a road in Poland ruefully studying a wheel that had parted company from its bike. One of the Egyptians, Hassib Farouk, instead of resting after the day's lap scurried about to buttonhole unwary spectators and explain: "I have only been riding four months."

Careful Hero. At week's end the Poles were ahead, but roadside experts were guessing that this year, for the first time, the team championship and the cup would go to the robot-like Russians. But the crowds--in Berlin at least--seemed less interested in the eventual winner than in an anonymous "competitor" wearing Norwegian colors. A careful rider, he kept up with the pack every day but was never close enough to the lead to have his name recorded among the frontrunners. At Goerlitz, just over the German border, he had wheeled past the guards with the rest of the racers, unbothered by customs or passport inspection, kept right on pedaling toward East Berlin. He was not seen again, and Berliners decided that one "peace rider" must have found his peace at last--in the freedom of West Berlin.

*Flashy, though somewhat precariously named, showplace of the Soviet zone.

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