The native of Brno made it to the junior national team, and even won a stage at the Youth Peace Race. However, in the end, he did not show up among the elite in this prestigious race. Perhaps also due to the fact that in 1984 he was supposed to travel to Los Angeles for the Olympic Games. But the boycott of the Eastern bloc deprived him of a world-class event.
And it strengthened even more his thoughts about emigrating from Czechoslovakia, which he had been thinking about since his junior years. “As young boys, of course, we were more interested in girls than politics… However, during the frequent competitions in the West, one could not help but notice that ‘their’ athletes had an open path to become professionals, while after an active career, all that awaited us was a return to socialist reality,” recalled Palov .
He decided to escape together with his colleague Vladimír Dolk during the trip of Dukla from Brno to Great Britain in 1986. He was promised help from the Australian cycling federation, where he planned to dock, but the evening before departure, the destination of the trip changed to Italy. “It was necessary to start improvising,” Palov smiled.
“On the way back we stopped in Vienna for ‘shopping’. I managed to extort passports from the tour leader under the pretext of needing to exchange money. When everyone left, Láda and I took the key from Avia from Dukla hidden under the front wheel, took our luggage and bikes out of the car and left a message on the seat so that the rest of the expedition wouldn’t wait for us unnecessarily,” he said.
They then cycled to Germany, where their uncle helped them arrange a temporary residence permit. And then within three months he got his dream of Australia. However, he again unfortunately missed participation in the Olympics. He already wanted to start in Seoul as an Australian citizen. “However, I could only get citizenship after two years of residence, which was a few weeks before the Olympics, and they refused to grant the official any exemption, even though the federal minister of sports intervened in the matter,” recounted Palov.
And so he started applying for a visa to Western Europe on his Czechoslovak passport with the aim of getting a foothold in the professional peloton. “I turned up in London at the end of March 1987 with a bike, a cable, £500 and more or less no plan,” he recalled with a smile. France.
“After the start in West Germany, the pace was such that eventual winner Stephen Roche remarked that if we continue like this, everyone will arrive in Paris in coffins. In addition, it was one of the longest Tours in history (4231 km) and you were almost afraid to think about actually reaching the finish line,” he describes. But he managed the most difficult race and finished in 103rd place.
However, his professional anabasis was short-lived. The team went bankrupt and after a short engagement in Belgium, also due to poor income, decided to quit and move back to Australia. He started a business, built a successful bicycle shop. In 2000, he sold it, finished his university studies and started working in finance. And to this day he lives in Australia in the state of Queensland and enjoys life. “I like the warm climate and the way of life of the people, who are quite relaxed here and no one bothers much,” praised Palov.
2023-07-05 09:03:05
#story #Czech #Tour #France #Emigration #premiere #Lady #Sport.cz
