Täve Schur was a world champion, an Olympic medalist – and a cycling idol in the GDR. He never thought about escaping and made no secret of his closeness to the system. He still denies one accusation in particular to this day.
Gustav-Adolf Schur, whom everyone just calls “Täve”, is well on his way there. The cycling legend turns 95 on February 23rd. He, who in 1989 was voted the most popular athlete in 40 years of the GDR and is an idol in the east of the long-unified republic. Then as now.
He never let himself be dissuaded from his fighting spirit and his desire for physical activity. Not even after your career. Where others gained weight, he always maintained his competition weight. Täve without a bike – unimaginable. Not even in old age. The great shock, which could have ended fatally, was not that long ago. And it had nothing to do with a bike.
In the spring of 2023, Schur, who was GDR athlete of the year nine times in a row from 1953 to 1961, had to undergo emergency surgery. He pursued his big goal with an iron will, as in his active days, but no longer as tactically clever as he once did. That meant cleaning the gutters. At the age of 92, he climbed onto his house – and fell. The consequences: eight broken ribs and a damaged lung. An asteroid was named after him in 2005. The prerequisite for his consent: “You had to assure me that he couldn’t crash.”
The fact that he survived could almost be described as a miracle. After nine days in the clinic, Schur was back home in Heyrothsberge near Magdeburg, where he was born. Apart from his time as an athlete in Leipzig, he lives there all his life. He didn’t lose his sense of humor even after the accident. “As a young athlete, I also practiced forward and backward somersaults. But that didn’t really work when I took off,” he said, commenting on the mishap.
For many people between Fichtelberg and Kap Arkona, the name Schur is synonymous with successful GDR sport. As long as the country existed, he was the poster boy for sport under socialism, before and after his career.
Schur sat for the SED in the People’s Chamber
Schur never made a secret of his closeness to the GDR system. Some demonize him as something of the past, others admire the fact that he never allowed himself to be bent. From 1958 until the fall of communism, Schur sat for the state party SED in the Volkskammer, the GDR parliament, and from 1998 to 2002 for the Left Party’s predecessor, the PDS, in the Bundestag.
The fact that Schur once became popular was purely for sporting reasons. He won the Peace Ride, the largest amateur stage race in the world at the time and often referred to as the Tour de France of the East, in 1955 and 1959. He became world champion in 1958 and 1959, and won Olympic silver in Rome in 1960 with the road foursome and bronze in Melbourne in the team classification in 1956. He became GDR champion in individual races six times.
However, his greatest coup came at the 1960 World Championships at the Sachsenring, although he didn’t win there. He knew the field would be focused on him, the winner of the past two years. Nevertheless, he made it into a three-man top group with compatriot Bernhard Eckstein († 82) and the Belgian Willy Vandenberghen († 82). He motioned for Eckstein to leave, expecting that Vandenberghen would see this as a deception and stay with him, with Schur.
That’s how it happened. Eckstein became world champion. “It was important that we as the GDR won the title – and not the person,” he once told “Sport Bild”. 200,000 spectators attended the motorcycle race track. This team thinking characterized Schur throughout his life. He always spoke of “we” and not only took the people from his sporting environment on board.
When “Sport Bild” once asked him whether he had never thought about escaping in order to ride the Tour de France and possibly even win it, he said: “I never rode for money, but only for joy and for people. I can’t disappoint and betray the people who make my life as an athlete possible with their work. They built me a house, they worked for me in the factory and thus brought money to the state so that I could train and travel to competitions. I never thought about escaping.”
To do this he would have had to leave behind his wife Renate, whom he lovingly called Reni. They were married for 58 years until her death in 2020. Four children were born from the marriage. Son Jan (63) achieved something that his father never managed: He won Olympic gold on the road in Seoul in 1988 with the GDR foursome and became a professional after the fall of the Wall.
From 1954 until the end of his career ten years later, father Täve played for SC DHfK Leipzig, one of the top GDR clubs where doping was also proven. A topic on which Schur has an incorrigible opinion. To this day he primarily denies forced doping in the GDR.
Hall of Fame induction debate
Also, but probably not only because of this, he has so far been refused entry into the German Sports Hall of Fame. From a sporting perspective, he undoubtedly belongs in this category. The extent to which his political convictions, in which he continues to glorify the GDR, and his opinion on doping play a role is highly controversial. There is always debate about whether Schur should be included or not.
“It wasn’t bad for us. People had jobs, nobody had to live on the streets,” says the grandfather of seven about life in the GDR. He doesn’t talk about the lack of freedom to travel, state security and the fear of going to prison if you openly express your opinion.
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Perhaps Täve Schur is remembered by many because of his unusual nickname, which is derived from Gustav. “I’m glad someone thought of that. Imagine if I had to sign autographs with my actual name,” he once said. That’s why he gave his son Jan a short name. “He shouldn’t have so much trouble writing.” And since one of his friends was the Czech cycling legend Jan Vesely († 79), the name for the Filius was quickly found.
On his birthday, the congratulatory letters will be piling up again in Heyrothsberge. In recent years, Schur has received a lot of money from the letters fans sent him. He didn’t keep it. He donated it to the Friedensfahrt Museum in Kleinmühlingen, very close to him. In honor of his roots from the time when Gustav-Adolf became Täve.
The text was created for the Sports Competence Center (WELT, SPORT BILD, BILD) and first published in SPORT BILD.
