Lothar Appler

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Lothar Appler 1966

Lothar Appler (born December 14, 1941 ) is a former German racing cyclist . He was successful in the GDR in the 1960s .

Sports career

Appler, a welder by profession, achieved success in road cycling . In 1957 he started for the first time in a cycling competition for touring cyclists at Berlin's vocational schools. In 1958 he began to compete in organized bike races in Berlin and already demonstrated his skills in the youth class with 70 victories. At the age of 19 he was already successful in the men's field. With the team of four from his club SC Dynamo Berlin , he won the GDR championship in 1961 in team driving , a discipline in which he was also GDR champion in 1962, 1963 and 1966. In the road criteria around the Solitude in Stuttgart and around the brown coal he came second and third. He also completed his first major stage race with the Tour of Egypt in 1961, in which he came ninth in the overall classification. The GDR cycling association nominated the 1.92 m tall Appler for the road world championships in 1961 , but there he retired early with two other GDR riders. In contrast, Appler triumphed in the 1962 edition of the Tour of Egypt. After eight stage wins, he became a sovereign tour winner. In the same year he won the Berlin-Cottbus-Berlin race. In 1963 he took part in the International Peace Tour stage race for the first time . He won a stage and in the end came in twelfth and was the third-best GDR driver. In total, Appler made four peace trips. It remained, however, with a stage win, in 1964 he achieved his best result with fourth place, in 1965 he had to give up prematurely due to illness and in 1966 ended up in 21st place. At the road world championship in 100 km team driving in Cologne he finished 7th with the GDR four-man ahead of the German team.

In 1967 Appler was expelled from the SC Dynamo and the GDR national team as a result of a disciplinary punishment on the part of the GDR Cycling Association. He had been accused of dropping out prematurely in the one-day race for the Great Street Prize for the Dynamo Cup on April 8, 1967, as one of the spokesmen for a “driver's strike”. The background was that the drivers of performance class I had to catch up with a specification compared to the other starters. Due to poor race organization, the group around the selected drivers was stopped several times by closed railway barriers without the leading group being neutralized. In protest, several top drivers gave up the race. Among them also Lothar Appler. The GDR Cycling Association reacted drastically: Appler (as well as Eberhard Butzke , Kurt Müller and Dieter Vogelsang ) were expelled from their sports clubs for “unworthy behavior”. Other drivers like Dieter Gonschorek and another six club drivers were given a six-month ban from starting abroad. That Appler was viewed as the initiator of the tasks of the race became clear a year later when he was portrayed in an article by the GDR cycling organ as the “spokesman for those without discipline”.

The then 26-year-old then switched to the company sports association (BSG) Post Berlin and remained successful. In his special discipline, the 100 km team race, he was GDR runner-up with the BSG Post team in 1968 and 1970. He also won the road races Around Berlin (1968) and Berlin – Angermünde – Berlin (1969). In 1968 he won the racing series of the week of international cycling in the GDR .

Appler ended his career in January 1971 at the age of 29 by winning the Berlin championship in two-man team driving alongside Detlef Kudwin on the winter track in the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle. At the same location, he had also won the 1001 lap ahead of the Schneider brothers from Switzerland in a spectacular race with Kudwin as a partner. This race was considered to be one of the most atmospheric races the Berlin Winterbahn had ever experienced. There were minutes of ovations for both couples. After 1990 he started a comeback, briefly took part in circuit races in Berlin as a C-amateur and celebrated several successes at the World Cup for senior citizens of his age group in St. Johann, Austria .

In 1963 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Junge Welt (Ed.): Cycling Almanac 5 . Berlin 1964, p. 2 .
  2. ^ German Cycling Association of the GDR (ed.): The cyclist . No. 15/1966 . Berlin 1966, p. 6 .
  3. ^ German Cycling Association of the GDR (ed.): The cyclist . No. 16/1967 . Berlin April 21, 1967, p. 15 .
  4. ^ German Cycling Association of the GDR (ed.): The cyclist . No. 29/1968 . Berlin July 19, 1968, p. 14 .
  5. ↑ World champion and peace driver honored by Walter Ulbricht , In: Berliner Zeitung , June 27, 1963, p. 9

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personal data
SURNAME Appler, Lothar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German racing cyclist (GDR)
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1941