Photo Report In Velo Veritas 2023

Human beings have always had great dreams. Visions. Driven to move away from what they already know. To discover new things, foreign things. The unknown. Long distances, great lengths they wanted to overcome. To be mobile. To keep moving forward.
To conquer the world.

How we progress on our own power, we've kind of forgotten that. What it's like to move forward on our own strength. That's what has been left by the wayside. The real freedom, the independence.
But watch out, there's something that still holds true: A steel frame, two wheels, and your two feet. That's all you need for freedom*.

*Abbreviated intro from "In Velo Veritas – the Film"

For example, Christoph Sanders, also known as Crispinus from Dresden. The man has arrived by bicycle - not for the first time, as I seem to remember. (Or am I confusing him with Tino Knauth from Berlin, also a regular at IVV events and who has also driven there entirely under his own power, along with other buddies from the local Eisenschweinkader? Doesn't matter.)
A good 500 kilometers, spread over Friday and Saturday. And on Sunday as a bonus, the epic round of the outing on classic racing bikes this year with 209 kilometers and 2,700 meters of elevation. Why? "The impressions are deeper," says the retro randonneur.
Distances like the long distance of In Velo Veritas, which has just toured the Weinviertel for the eleventh time, are normally just a breakfast ride for the German. Ever since he decided over a decade ago to participate in Paris-Brest-Paris, long-distance cycling has never let him go.

The event In Velo Veritas is commonly referred to as following the example of l'Eroica – the first now globally successful retro cycling event that took place in Gaiole in Chianti, Italy, and sparked the renaissance of classic cycling starting in 1997. And that is certainly true with regard to its immediate origin story.
However, even the legendary trendsetter pays homage to older pioneers during its journey over the famous "strade bianche". To competitions that required a considerable amount of courage, madness, and endurance given the infrastructure at the time, road conditions, dietary habits, or clothing standards – not to mention the state of bicycle technology: The first editions of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, or, somewhat later, the Vuelta a Espana; the early one-day races like Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo, or Tour of Flanders; the brutally long trials in the style of the initial six-day races (actually solo and non-stop) or the End-to-End tour in Great Britain (1,440 km).

Compared to those, the mileage of the Weinviertel tour is quite tame. The idea is to pass on the spark of enthusiasm as widely as possible, and not just among a small circle of physically privileged individuals.
Besides the aforementioned "Epic", there is a choice of a challenging 140 kilometers and a pleasurable 70 kilometers – which, by the way, are never the same, at most similar in parts. Because In Velo Veritas changes its starting and finishing location every year. On the program for the first time this year: The district capital Mistelbach, located in the far northeast of Lower Austria.

From the local city hall, it started, weather forecast perfect, breakfast plentiful. And what had already been announced the day before among flea market stalls, warm-up rounds, braised wild boar back, and the finest vinyl sound from DJ Moneypenny under the impressive, over 120-year-old copper beech tree at the forecourt of the event center, came true: 900 participants, a new record for attendance!

This is somewhat surprising considering that the rules of In Velo Veritas, unlike those of Paris-Brest-Paris, have one significant limitation. For the 122-year younger IVV, only older material is allowed. According to the event's specifications, the bicycles must be racing bikes from the year 1987 or older, or authentic replicas.
Naturally, there is a reason for this. In the second half of the 1980s, a series of inventions - indexed shift levers, where each gear clicks into place, clipless pedals that provided significantly more grip and pulling power, and finally brake shift levers, which made the cumbersome reach to the down tube to change gears unnecessary - ushered in the modern era of road cycling. And naturally, a vintage ride, which pays homage to past times, styles, and virtues, aims to slow down the march of such modernity.

Christoph Sanders rides almost always with such material - even at Paris-Brest-Paris. There is really nothing against it, as effortlessly as quite a few of these products whip around corners, as tough as the supposedly outdated materials are, and as smoothly as knowledgeable mechanics at the aid stations fix things up when there's a glitch.
But the lack of routine in handling the classic beauties was apparent in most of the IVV peloton. The scraping of the metal pedal cage on the ground also outed me as an amateur in front of the strap construction. Blisters on my fingers revealed around kilometer 80 that I usually hold more comfortably shaped handlebars and exert significantly less force for braking. But most importantly, my legs signaled from the start that I am no longer enough of a heroine for a hero's crank.

Indeed, a wall stood before us without any reservation, directissima up into the wine-growing area. And after five kilometers, promptly the next one, a bit steeper still. It felt like half of the adjoining 1,600 meters of altitude were conquered in about 30 minutes of ride time.
But what fantastic vistas, what almost surreal sculpted landscapes, what intense color plays lay behind this sudden beginning! To the left, the vineyards, and to the right, the barley fields or vice versa, above the blue sky, below the deep red corn poppy, all around due to the well-tempered early summer everything was a couple of weeks greener than usual.
Later, rapeseed met early cherries, swift hare met elegant kite, monumental wind turbines met boldly strung power lines.

And when, just after kilometer twelve, the first cellar lane appeared, it seemed everything had been said and seen. Yet it was there that the Weinviertel really started to gain momentum, rocking high and lapping up and down, ebbing away and rearing up again.
Hollow paths, field paths, bike paths, forest paths. A colonnade with a view of the castle, a photo spot with a view of the fortress, a chalk plain with a view of the cliffs. Marterberg, Galgenberg, Buschberg. Tannauwald, Leiser Wald, Schilderwald. Where, please, is the restroom?

Almost overwhelmed by this staccato of delights, I collapsed at the refreshment stations. Could the earliest generation of cyclists in the waning 19th century have even remotely suspected the joy and pleasure it would bring people 130 years later to follow in their tracks?
However, "following in their tracks" is almost blasphemous. We have freewheels, top-notch ones. We have brakes, albeit feeble ones, and gears, though they are hard to shift. We have pneumatic tires, mostly airtight, and perhaps secretly a modern rain jacket tucked away. The first heroes of the roads – heroines were largely excluded – had none of these.

When the 117 participants of the long-distance ride Vienna-Berlin gathered for the start in Floridsdorf on June 29, 1893, a sprocket fixed directly to the rear hub (thus only one gear and constant pedaling), handlebars bent adventurously backwards, baggy trousers, and huge oil lamps were state of the art. The Dunlop tire, which had just come onto the market, was probably not yet on everyone's bicycle.
No wonder, then, that the brave "gentlemen riders," aka amateurs, with their bumpy solid rubber tires were particularly put off by the poor, "unchausseured" roads in this country. Furthermore, they battled with weather caprices. Two severe thunderstorms made life difficult for those who were often completely inadequately equipped.

The sporting event, which was followed by thousands of spectators at both start and finish and framed by a days-long festival program - races, receptions, parades, city tours - is considered the birth of bicycle racing in Germany and Austria and the trigger for a true bicycle boom. However, its primary purpose was to demonstrate the performance and durability of the then still young product bicycle.
The 583-kilometer distance ride was preceded by a similar ride by officers of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies. At that time, horses and bicycles competed for the title of the better, individual means of transportation, so sporting comparisons between cyclists and riders took place regularly. However, the steel steeds were kept away from the distance ride in the fall of 1892. The armies probably feared exposing their cavalries.
Rightly so. The fastest rider needed 71 hours and 40 minutes for the distance. The legendary Josef Fischer, winner of the bicycle race, reached Berlin, where cycling was generally forbidden at the time and considered an exalted hobby of the wealthy, after 31:00:22.4 hours. Within a week, 30 of the 250 horses used perished, including those of the winners. No such late effects are known for the cyclists who started. And this despite cruelly appearing provisions such as "a cup of milk with cognac" for the third-place finisher Franz Gerger.

Back to modern times, as pure happiness awaited here. The branches of the massive willows hung low over the banks of the Katzelsdorfer pond, providing shade. The conversations at the tables were pleasantly rippling. The lake rested quietly.
Pausing and enjoying is as much a part of In Velo Veritas as pedaling, braking, and steering. And taking a break is indeed made very easy!

In Katzelsdorf, the village innkeeper Bauer from Bernhardstal, with the vigorous help of the local fire brigade, served up a breakfast buffet that many a four-star hotel could envy. And later switched to hearty home-cooked food that revived even the weariest legs: baked or grilled chicken, beef goulash, cheese dumplings, and even blood sausage hash.
Over in Staatz, the good souls of the event center proved that sausage salad is not just sausage salad, and that chickpea curry, when well made, can even worthily replace the sadly already consumed emperor's pancake. Spectacularly positioned right at the foot of the Staatz cliff in front of the lovingly renovated granary of the castle, the producers themselves served us apple juice, grape juice, and delightful Emperor's Spritzer; there again was the quaffable "Helles Grad", directly from Siebenhirten near Mistelbach.
Harry's delicacy express in the baroque granary in Klement finally provided a saving snack at just the right time, savory or sweet: the finest pasta salad, fresh strawberries, coffee and cake - mmmhhhh!
Who would, who could, in the face of such delicacies, simply move on straightaway?

Eventually, however, it had to be done. And the reward for getting up and at it came immediately, because I met Fritz Frauenschuh.
I had noticed the suntanned, white-haired senior earlier on. With Schartner Bombe stickers on his somewhat worn Peugeot from 1965, he had fought his way up a ramp, obviously in too low a gear, until he could go no further. His posture identified him as an old hand, the muscles under his now quite slack skin as still very fit.
And indeed: the man from Mondsee is 82 years young, thus the oldest participant in this year's In Velo Veritas. And he has set himself a goal: "That in retirement I cycle everywhere where I would never go by car."

We started talking, he, bursting with energy, me, curious and fascinated. The 1960s in the legendary Schartner-Bombe racing team were his sporting heyday. Although he never made it to the Tour of Austria, on good days he served as the noble domestique for the brothers Ludwig and Rudolf Kretz, Roman Humenberger, Rolf Eberl & Co. "Shoe" is what they called him, "because Frauenschuh was too long for them," chuckled the former baker. His greatest success? A tenth place in the mountain championship, "even though everyone was there."