Rudolf Révay

* 1933

  • “The truth is that when we raced in Karlovy Vary – Prague race, I usually won the lap in the hill. I used to be there first, that time as well. Malten used to drive fast from below, he did so to that time. However, I found out that he got slowed down on the cobblestones. So, I told him I would wait for him on the hill. And I waited for him on the hill. We started drafting and I was the lead rider. Because I wanted him to recover when drafting I told him: ‘Have some food.‘ However, as soon as I found out that journalists were approaching us in a car, I became the back rider and let him be the lead rider so that the journalists saw that we were doing it together. Because otherwise, they would have spoken ill of him – and I did not want that because he was my friend.”

  • “It brought me to cycling – we already lived in Souš. I got my hands on a book by Jan Veselý, our best cyclist. I turned to a page which described that he won a twenty km race, and his time was there. I used to ride a bike a lot when I was studying at a vocational school. That is why a found a similar circuit from Souš to the swimming pool in Most, there was the road through Kopisty which led past the tram to Horní Litvínov. From Horní Litvínov there was a second road back. I was trying to reach the time with which Veselý won the race."

  • “Hitler Youth unit was there. We did not like them much. They were behind the fence; they were not allowed to go outside on their own. When we walked around, they were threatening us with knives. There was no love, no talking. When we went to the field, we had to walk around that farm and they were there running around. They were guarded quite a lot. They did not run around the town on their own. You could see that they were Hitler Youth and being raised for the army.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Letohrad, 13.02.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:32:20
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I raced so that I would help the faster guys to the finish

Rudolf Révay in 1961
Rudolf Révay in 1961
zdroj: witness´s archive

Rudolf Révay was born on 11 May 1933 in Mojmírovice near Nitra, Slovakia. His parents farmed a piece of field and had a small farm. His father Štefan (1912-1983) went to work in the North Bohemian lignite mines after the war. Rudolf and his mother Terezie (1907-1983) followed him in 1947 when he finished elementary school. They settled down in the area of Most. Rudolf started to study to become a locksmith in Komořany. At that time, his father bought him his first bike. Rudolf learned to ride a bike then and started riding on a 20km circuit according to the book by Jan Veselý. He measured his times and kept improving. Jiří Punčochář noticed him one day and took him to a cycling team in Kopisty and then to Nový Litvínov. He rode on tubular tyres since 1951. From 1953 to 1955 he did his military service in Mladá Boleslav and then in Red Star Prague’s sports centre where he met professional sportspeople. After the end of military service in 1955, he moved to Děčín where we repaired electrometers and where he also trained. In 1958, he married Marta, née Zemanová (1936 – 2014), an elementary school teacher. They had two children in 1960 and 1961. He advanced to the position of standard-setter at work and worked there until his retirement in 1993. He always had cycling as a hobby. Rudolf Révay was not a fast cyclist but he had endurance and was the best in the hills. He cycled because he enjoyed it and was with friends. To those faster ones, he often prepared conditions for their final spurts. In 1958 he became the national champion in cycling and won the most difficult Czechoslovak race Prague - Karlovy Vary - Prague. In 1960 he participated in the Peace Race and finished 19th. In 1962 he retired from his sporting career and devoted himself to his family. In 2010 he moved with his wife to Letohrad, where he lived in 2023.