Bremen six-day race
The Bremen six-day race is a traditional cycling event in Bremen that takes place annually in January. The first Bremen six-day race was held in 1910, the second only in 1965 in the Bremen City Hall, which was inaugurated a year earlier (since 2011 the official ÖVB-Arena ), in which the race is still taking place today. In 2013 the race took place for the 50th time. Officially, however, the events have only been counted since 1965.
history
The first race in 1910
The first edition of the Bremen six-day race took place in November 1910 in the ballrooms of the Schützenhof restaurant . The built-in track was 95.6 meters long, the curve elevation was 43 degrees, which earned the track the name noodle pot . There was space for 4,000 spectators. 16 drivers were at the start for a daily fee of 90 marks, which was only partially paid out because the cashier had embezzled the entrance fee. The winners were the Hanoverian world champion Willy Arend and the Berlin Eugen Stabe .
Six days from 1965 to 2011
The next six-day race in Bremen did not take place until 1965, 55 years later, when the organizer Willi Röper re-initiated the Bremen Six Days . As the venue, Röper chose the then newly built and inaugurated in 1964 Bremer Stadthalle , in which the race has been held regularly since 1965 until today. In addition, Röper let the race take place in January, which has also been maintained to this day. With a length of 166.6 meters, the Bremer Bahn is one of the smallest six-day railways, but with a curve elevation of 58 degrees, it is also one of the steepest.
In 1982, after Röper's death, his assistant Frank Minder took over the track cycling event. He was the first six-day organizer to use an event format for the race with a large show program. Every year around 130,000 spectators came to the Bremen six-day race, which became known for its folk festival character.
The first winners in 1965 were the Belgian Rik Van Steenbergen and the Dane Palle Lykke . The first German victory came a year later, when Rudi Altig won together with Dieter Kemper . In 1969 the Belgian Patrick Sercu won in a team with the Dutchman Peter Post . The record winner is René Pijnen from the Netherlands with seven victories, followed by Andreas Kappes from Bremen with six wins each and Bruno Risi from Switzerland .
Sports director of the race from 1992 to 2011 was Patrick Sercu. The contract of the organizer Frank Minder also ran up to and including the event in January 2011. In June 2010, the Bremen economic authorities announced that the organization of the race for the time thereafter would be publicly announced.
The race since 2012
In 2011 it was announced that the companies Bremer Veranstaltungs- und Event Gesellschaft and elko Technik will organize the six-day race in future in cooperation with the Bremen Economic Development Corporation . On June 27, 2011, the three partners founded Event und Sport Nord GmbH (ESN) for this purpose , the first managing directors of which were Hans Peter Schneider and Theo Bührmann jr. are and already one day later presented the new concept of the Sixdays Bremen to the public at a press conference in the ÖVB-Arena Bremen. There the new sporting director Erik Weispfennig was introduced at the same time , who can look back on a long list of winners as a professional in cycling (World Champion in Madison 2000, Vice World Champion '90 track quad, Vice military world champion '92 track quad, World Cup winner track '91, '93, '94, ' 01, '02, 6 × German master track, international Australian champion in the 2-person team race '03, '04, winner 4 - track tour '90, '92, '98, '99, '04,).
Since then, Erik Weispfennig has been setting the course in the direction of "even more sport" as the sports director at Sixdays Bremen. In 2015, the 51st 6-day race in Bremen was upgraded to Category 1 by the UCI World Cycling Association, with the result that the starting riders can collect important World Cup qualification points after the race. For Category 1, the Sixdays must offer and carry out the following sports categories: Junior starter field U19, junior starter field U23, starter field professionals, starter field women, sprinters. In addition, the Sixdays organizers have been letting paracycling tandem teams on the track outside of Category 1 in Bremen since 2014, with professionals as experienced pilots taking part together with visually impaired athletes from the German Disabled Sports Association.
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Venues
The first race in 1910 took place in the ballrooms of the then large restaurant Schützenhof in Bremen Neustadt .
The venue since 1965 until today has been the Stadthalle Bremen , in Bremen-Findorff , on the Bürgerweide north of Bremen Central Station . This multifunctional event hall , which was built in 1964 by the city of Bremen, is meanwhile the Bremen Economic Development Agency (WFB) acting on behalf of the city, which in this function is also involved in the newly founded event company for the six-day race, the ESN. The hall was officially known as the Bremen City Hall for around forty years, until 2004 . After the modernization, reconstruction and expansion of the hall in 2004/05, the naming rights were temporarily sold by the WFB to two different sponsors and , in the meantime, the sponsor was renamed. The name of the town hall changed from the beginning of 2005 to the end of 2009 in AWD-Dome , from the beginning of 2010 to autumn 2011 in the Bremen-Arena and since then in the ÖVB-Arena . The renaming was repeatedly criticized in public and in common parlance the name Stadthalle has held up to this day.
Trivia
At the 2013 event, the decades-old train bell tore and threatened to break apart. At short notice, the Bremen Sea Emergency Management helped out with the ship's bell on the decommissioned MS Wilhelm Kaisen and had the bell brought to the Bremen town hall by courier.
Winner of the Bremen six-day race
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literature
- Roger de Maertelaere: De Mannen van de night. 100 years of zesdaagsen. De Eecloonaar, Eeklo (Belgium) 2000, ISBN 90-74128-67-X (Dutch).
- Jacq van Reijendam: 6 Daagsen Statistics 2009. Self-published, Breda (Netherlands) 2009, no. 17 (Dutch; yearbook: overview of the six-day races 2008/09, with statistics).
- Thorsten Schmidt : 50 years of the 6-day race in Bremen. Kultur Buch Bremen, Bremen 2013, ISBN 978-3-933851-16-1 (Photos: Karl Franke).
Movie
- The Bremen 6-day race. Director: Heide Nullmeyer. Bremen 1998. DVD, length: 25 minutes (series: Achtung Klappe! Kinder als Reporter ).
Web links
- Official website
- A life for the Bremen six-day race - portrait of Frank Minder in the world from January 7, 2009
- The industry goes in circles - report on the Bremen Six-Day Race 2010 in the Frankfurter Rundschau on January 21, 2010
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b For comparison: Today's Bremer Bahn is short at 166.6 meters, at World Championships and Olympic Games a minimum length of 250 meters is required (see UCI rules for track cycling, § 3.6.068 ).
- ↑ a b c It was long, long ago ... ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: Official website of Sixdays Bremen (operator: ESN - Event & Sport Nord GmbH , Bremen); Retrieved May 4, 2014.
- ↑ Peter Glauche: A life for the Bremen six-day race . In: Die Welt from January 7, 2009; Retrieved May 4, 2013.
- ↑ Michael Brandt: New start for the six-day race . In: Weser-Kurier of June 24, 2010; Retrieved May 4, 2014.
- ↑ Sixdays Bremen . On: LiVE-Radsport.ch from January 20, 2011; Retrieved May 4, 2014.
- ↑ Annemarie Struss-von Poellnitz: The town hall is now called the ÖVB-Arena . In: Weser-Kurier of August 18, 2011; Retrieved May 4, 2014.
- ↑ Cf. essay by Hendrik Werner: Advertising is always and everywhere . In: Weser-Kurier from April 5, 2014; Retrieved May 4, 2014.
- ↑ The rescue cruiser bell saves Bremen's “Sixdays” . On: Seenotretter.de from January 13, 2013; Retrieved May 4, 2014.
