International Peace Tour 1963

Individual winner: Klaus Ampler, GDR

The 16th International Peace Tour (Course de la paix) was a cycling race that was held from May 9th to 25th, 1963. The stage trip had a total length of 2568 kilometers and ran from Prague via Warsaw to East Berlin . The GDR driver Klaus Ampler won the individual classification, the GDR team also won the team classification. The violet jersey of the most active driver was won by the Belgian Joseph Haeseldonckx , the mountain classification was won by Jozef Gawliczek from Poland.

Attendees

115 drivers took part in the 1963 peace run, among them again the single starter Tarek Aboul-Zahab from Lebanon. After the previous year's participants had not reported Sweden, Egypt and Tunisia again and the Scottish Cycling Association participated for the first time, riders from the following 19 national associations started:

plus single starter Tarek Aboul-Zahab ( Lebanon )

The cycling association from the GDR had nominated the following riders:

Route

The 2568 kilometers were divided into 15 stages, of which the 13th day section from Dresden to Erfurt was the longest at 245 kilometers and the time trial stage from Bautzen to Dresden the shortest day section. The 16th tour had the many neutralized routes as a special feature. From Banská Bystrica to Zvolen 19 kilometers were cycled without evaluation, from Košice to Prešov (33 km) and from Rzeszów to Warsaw (350 km) the athletes were transported by train. A 45-kilometer route was covered by bus between Görlitz and Bautzen. On the 3rd stage Hustopeče - Bratislava there was a team time trial, the individual time trial was held on the 13th stage Bautzen - Dresden.

Race course

For a long time it didn't look like a double success for the GDR team. Although the GDR had won the team time trial of the 3rd stage, it suffered a slump on the following stage that threw them back to 6th place. Only the good results in the individual time trial of the 12th stage with Ampler as the winner brought the GDR team back to the top. On the following stages, the GDR team was able to keep the competitors in check and thus secure the overall victory. The Belgian riders presented themselves as surprisingly strong on this tour, above all 21-year-old August Verhaegen . He wore the yellow jersey on five stages and won the 14th day from Erfurt to Magdeburg. He finished second in the final, his teammate Camiel Vyncke reached 3rd place, which was enough for Belgium to place 2nd in the team classification.

The triumphant of the 16th Peace Tour was 22-year-old Klaus Ampler. It didn't look successful for him either. On the 4th stage he had dropped to 22nd place, six minutes behind, but then worked his way up place by place. After the 8th stage he was only 32 seconds behind front runner Verhaegen in 2nd place and made a decisive attack on the 12th stage of the tour from Bautzen to Dresden. He took Verhaegen from over three minutes and took the lead in the overall standings. The final decision in favor of Amplers was made on the 13th stage from Dresden to Erfurt, when he drove away from Verhaegen by another four minutes.

The dominator of the last two peace drives, the Soviet team, started in 1963 with a strongly changed team and could no longer build on past successes. In the team standings she only landed in 3rd place, the best individual driver was Anatoly Tscherepowitsch in fifth.

stage	Start finish	Stage winner	Stage length	Time (h)
01	Around Prague	Anatoly Tscherepowitsch (Soviet Union)	123 km	3:04:53
02	Prague - Brno	Antonio Tagliani (Italy)	220 km	5:39:58
03	Hustopeče - Bratislava	Team time trial: GDR	109 km	2:23:21
04th	Bratislava - Banská Bystrica	Jean Pierre Genet (France)	209 km	5:14:34
05	Zvolen - Košice	Klaus Ampler (GDR)	221 km	6:08:11
06th	Prešov - Rzeszów	Zdeněk Hasman (Czechoslovakia)	185 km	4:45:45
07th	Around Warsaw	Lothar Appler (GDR)	135 km	3:03:16
08th	Warsaw - Toruń	Klaus Ampler (GDR)	226 km	5:21:27
09	Toruń - Poznan	Severino Andreoli (Italy)	150 km	3:41:22
10	Poznan - Zielona Góra	Józef Beker (Poland)	123 km	2:58:27
11	Zielona Góra - Görlitz	Viktor Kapitonov (Soviet Union)	175 km	4:15:20
12	Bautzen - Dresden	Klaus Ampler (GDR)	57 km	1:17:39
13	Dresden - Erfurt	Gennady Lebedev (Soviet Union)	245 km	6:03:42
14th	Erfurt - Magdeburg	August Verhaegen (Belgium)	202 km	5:26:37
15th	Magdeburg - East Berlin	Antonio Tagliani (Italy)	188 km	4:34:48

Final results

Individual evaluation
	driver	team	time
01.	Klaus Ampler	GDR	61:53:51 h
02.	August Verhaegen	Belgium	+ 5:51 min
03.	Camiel Vyncke	Belgium	+ 8:53 min
04th	Constantin Dumitrescu	Romania	+ 10:05 min
05.	Anatoly Cherepovich	Soviet Union	+ 12:05 min
06th	Josef Timmerman	Belgium	+ 12:53 min
07th	Jan Kudra	Poland	+ 13:05 min
08th.	Viktor Kapitonov	Soviet Union	+ 13:23 min
09.	Anatoly Olisarenko	Soviet Union	+ 15:46 min
10.	Gustav-Adolf Schur	GDR	+ 16:41 min
11.	Pavel Dolezel	Czechoslovakia	+ 17:32 min
12.	Lothar Appler	GDR	+ 17:52 min
...
18th	Günter Lux	GDR	+ 27:17 min
19th	Manfred Brüning	GDR	+ 19:10 min
27.	Manfred Weißleder	GDR	+ 51:47 min
...
84.	By Örn	Norway	+ 14:23:34 h

Team ranking
	team	time
01.	GDR	188: 35: 29 h
02.	Belgium	+ 3:21 min
03.	Soviet Union	+ 3:44 min
04th	Poland	+ 15:18 min
05.	Romania	+ 28:34 min
06th	Italy	+ 1:31:41 min
07th	Bulgaria	+ 1:18:57 h
08th.	Czechoslovakia	+ 1:48:37 h
09.	Yugoslavia	+ 2:09:33 h
10.	Hungary	+ 2:55:19 h
11.	Denmark	+ 3:38:36 h
12.	Finland	+ 6:44:04 h
13.	Morocco	+ 6:56:55 h
14th	England	+ 7:54:49 h
15th	Scotland	+ 10:24:14 h
16.	Australia	+ 14:30:40 h
17th	Norway	+ 26:16:31 h
	eliminated: France, Netherlands

Purple leotard
1. Joseph Haeseldonckx (Belgium)
2. Klaus Ampler (GDR)
3. Rajmund Zielinski (Poland)

Mountain scoring
1. Jozef Gawliczek (Poland)
2. Matej Laczo (Czechoslovakia)
3. Camiel Vyncke (Belgium)

literature

Klaus Ullrich. Every time in May . Sportverlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-328-00177-8 , pp. 250-255.
GDR sports newspaper Deutsches Sportecho , April / May 1963 issues
XVI. Internationale Friedensfahrt 1963. Neues Deutschland, Berlin 1963, 34 pages
That was the XVI. Peace ride. New Germany, Berlin 1963, 32 pages