The greatest spy story ever happened in motorbike racing, told by Mat Oxley, one of Britain's most prominent journalists.
A crazy and very true story, at the height of the Cold War. It is the story of Ernst Degner, an excellent East German racer and engine technician.
He had been engaged by MZ and was the right-hand man of Walter Kaaden, the engineer who had worked with Von Braun on the V1s during the Second World War, and had then applied those studies to the two-stroke engine, turning Zschopau's motorbikes into super-fast machines.
With one of them Degner had made his debut in the 125 World Championship in 1957, and had already collected several victories when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. From there the daring escape to West Germany by faking a retirement at the Swedish Grand Prix, and the move to Suzuki with which he won the 50cc World Championship the following year, the only title won by a Warsaw Pact rider.
He raced in both the 50 and 125 with the Hamamatsu bikes, which had the same architecture of MZ. The East German Secret Service accused him of having brought copies of plans for the expansion chambers and rotating disc improvements devised by Kaaden.
In 1983, after he had moved to the Canary Islands, he was found dead at the age of 52 in his flat. Officially from a drug overdose, but some newspapers claimed that the hand of STASI was behind it.
Il prezzo della velocità, 268 pages to read in one go!
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