Zdenek Stybar glittered in his white world champion’s kit as he walked across the line to win the Liéven round of the 2012 cyclocross World Cup. Above his head, the Czech star held his custom pink Specialized, a present from his Quick-Step WorldTour road team’s bike sponsor.
Stybar at his cyclocross peak — smiling, professional, courted by the world’s best teams — was a fitting bookend to the Czech Republic’s journey from cycling obscurity to ‘cross powerhouse. Over the course of four decades, the country’s racers overcame the poverty and isolation caused by the Iron Curtain. Their resourcefulness and passion for the sport helped them blossom into international greats, once the Soviet Union folded. But the process was long and painful.
The Czech journey began in 1972, when Prague hosted that year’s cyclocross world championships. During that event, the country’s grim conditions shocked the western Europeans getting their first peek behind the curtain.
“We saw burnt-out cars and tanks, just left on the street,” five-time amateur world champ Robert Vermeire told Belgian magazine Humo in 2015. “It may sound weird, but the people looked blacked out. They were dressed old-fashioned and unkempt, and looked ahead despondently.”
Vermeire and the other western Europeans had stepped into the long aftermath of the Prague Spring, a short period of political liberalization that began in early 1968. Within a few months, Soviet tanks crushed this brief flirtation with a more open society. Against that bleak backdrop, Eric DeVlaeminck won the sixth of his seven professional titles ahead of three-time champion Rolf Wolfshohl of Germany and Swiss Herman Gretener. The Czechoslovakians, firmly back under the thumb of the Soviet Union, were not permitted to ride in the professional ranks.
In the amateur race, though, the home team impressed. Just 22, cycling prodigy Miloš Fišera looked poised to deliver an upset, but made the mistake of going in for a bike change before the sprint. As he did, Belgian Norbert Dedeckere jumped away for the win. Still, Czechoslovakia had scored its first medal in the only international competition to which it had regular access. Behind Fišera, three more Czechoslovakians finished in the top 10.
The Czech successes during the ’72 worlds began to pry open the doors the Soviet invasion had slammed shut. The Swiss, conveniently free of Cold War political entanglements, began to invite the Czechoslovakians to their annual Christmas races. Given the value communist governments placed on sporting achievement — even in non-Olympic sports — the Czechoslovakian government granted its cyclists visas to travel to Switzerland, and eventually, to other nations.
Czech riders impressed the ‘cross establishment not only with their toughness and skill, but also with their resourcefulness. Tucked behind panels of their old cars, they smuggled out the one decent piece of ‘cross equipment the country produced — Barum tubulars — and found a ready market in the Belgians, who welcomed the affordable alternative to pricey Clements. With the income, the Czechs either bought western goods to smuggle back, or brought the cash home to supplement their government stipends.
While they made inroads in the sport, the professional ranks remained off-limits. But in the amateur and the junior ranks, the Czechoslovakians soon emerged as a force, particularly at the world championships. In 1977, Vojtěch Červínek was third in the amateurs, with Fišera fifth. Three years later, Fišera’s nephew Radomír Šimůnek won the junior men’s title. And in 1981, in Tolosa, Spain, Fišera finally earned his stripes, outsprinting Pole Grzegorz Jaroszewski and Belgian Paul De Brauwer. It was the start of a gold rush.
The next year in Lanarvily, France, Fišera repeated and Šimůnek, now in the seniors, was second. Šimůnek took the title himself in 1983 and 1984, while Roman Kreuziger Sr., father of Tinkoff pro Roman Kreuziger Jr., and Ondrej Glajza took the ’83 and ’84 junior titles, respectively.
Karel Camrda added another amateur title in 1988, and in 1989, Glajza and Šimůnek gave Czechoslovakia another one-two finish. It was the final title credited to Czechoslovakia. In November of that year, the Velvet Revolution swept the country and peacefully ended 40 years of communist rule. The nation officially split to the Czech and Slovak republics on January 1, 1993. Only weeks later, Kamil Ausbuher brought home the first rainbow stripes to the Czech Republic, in the junior category.
For Fišera, the revolution came too late. At 39, the man who put Czech ‘cross on the map rode several professional seasons, but with few big results. Šimůnek, however, was in his prime. Turning professional for the 1990 season, he quickly notched victories on hallowed ground in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. He won the 1991 Superprestige series, and capped the season by winning the Czech Republic’s first professional world title. He won the 1992 Superprestige in the rainbow jersey, and won the series a final time in 1995.
Fišera and Šimůnek helped forge a cyclocross heritage that extends through Šimůnek’s son, Radomir Šimůnek, Jr., now a veteran of the international circuit, and a host of workingman’s heroes like Jiří Pospíšil, Zydenek Mlynar, Martin Bina, and Petr Dlask. Perhaps because the Czechs lack the abundance of prolific professional winners like Belgium, or perhaps because its potential professional class was repressed for so long, the nation rarely receives its due in the cyclocross pantheon. But it belongs there.
Since 1996, when the under-23 world championship replaced the amateur category, the Czech Republic sits third in total world championship medals behind Belgium and the Netherlands. In the junior race, which has run since 1979, it sits fourth, behind traditional powerhouses the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. But if the Czech Republic’s results are combined with those of the late Czechoslovakia, the country vaults to first in total junior medals, and second in world champions. There, it trails just the Netherlands by only a single title.
More importantly than individual riders or titles, though, the Czechs have developed a ‘cross culture, one that will help keep the sport at the forefront for the foreseeable future. The nation’s long-running UCI series started as the Budvar Cup in 2001, and was bankrolled by the country’s famed lager brewery until international porta-potty giant Toi Toi took over the title spot in 2007. This season’s series will count eight events from late September to early December. Internationally, the course at Tabor has hosted rounds of the UCI World Cup nine times, more than any other venue aside from legendary Koksijde, Belgium, and Hoogerheide, Netherlands. It has also hosted three world championships.
The 2016-’17 season is set to be a lean year for the Czechs. Stybar has seemingly departed for good, and no top-flight contender has emerged to replace him. There is no Czech World Cup round this year. Czech ‘cross has certainly faced harder years, though, and as always, there is plenty of talent in the pipeline.
Most immediately, the country will look to Nikola Nosková, who took the silver medal in the first women’s U23 world championship last season. On the men’s side, Adam Ťoupalík, now 20, looks to be the post-Stybar hope. At worlds, the Czech prodigy raised his arms in victory a lap early, losing his lead and eventually finishing second to Belgian Eli Iserbyt. It was a familiar scenario: a last lap mistake, a second place, a Belgian win. Four decades earlier, Miloš Fišera had felt the same stinging defeat. Of course, Fišera’s loss had started a revolution.
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