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as the intestines. In addition there were trade unions, women’s organisations, artists’ unions, the pioneer organisationsfor children and the aforementioned organisation for young people, Komsomol.
    Having been admitted into his local division, Djamolidine was accepted into a Baku cycling team and was soon afterwards promoted to the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic’s under-16s team as there was no shortage of his talent or motivation. He quickly grasped that the sport of cycling involved much more than merely pedalling uphill on a metal frame with rubber wheels. The presence of other riders turned his attempts to reduce wind resistance into a relentless game. He realised the importance of reading the wheel of the rider in front of him, following the rhythm; he experienced being sucked into a field of possibly a hundred riders, cycling in a fan formation to cancel out the wind and forming part of a breakaway group of leads. When he had been cycling on his own he had been playing a simple game of three-in-a-row; now it was chess or Go.
    His coaches tried to make him cycle laps, but Djamolidine despised this repetitive pedalling that got him nowhere and deliberately rode below his ability.
    â€˜I’m a mountain biker!’ he stated, making a defiant stance with his skinny, but sinewy body.
    His teenage years passed with school, training and races for the ASSR team, where he now only just managed to be promoted to the under-18s and did not even come close to being selected for the national youth team, and he was able to hold on to his place purely because he had swallowed even more amphetamines than his competitors at the qualifying races. His talent was, in other words, limited. His life away from cycling was becoming increasingly unfocused and, when the time came for a possible promotion to the senior teams, everyone involved already knew what the answer would be.
    In the period that followed he tried with diminishing ardour to find work as a bicycle mechanic. At home the respect he had once commanded started to fade away as he was no longer seen wearing the colours of the national team, and, in the absence of cycling training camps, he began to feel seriously trapped in his parents’ flat. He tried going out for daylong rides in the mountains, but riding on his own was and always would be a poor substitute.
    Both his parents and the authorities made it clear that finding a job was now a priority and Djamolidine finally saw no alternative to the oil industry. He was hired as a tapper on a state drilling operation. Aftertwo and a half years, however, he had become sufficiently fed up with staring at the slow see-sawing counter-weight movements of the pumps to carry out an idea which had been forming in his mind for a long time: escaping from the republic.
    He would ride his bike across the mountains to Iran in order to apply for asylum at the American embassy in Teheran. The majority of the border between Azerbaijani SSR and Iran followed the Arak River. However, towards the south and out towards the coast, the border went through the Talesh Mountains and Djamolidine had heard of a path which would take him as far as the border. As long as he succeeded in getting across the border, he would be able to find his way on the other side easily.
    Once he had completed his preparations his backpack contained the following: one change of clothes in a waterproof bag, identity papers and other documents, one hundred roubles and a little Iranian currency (a 500-rial note and a few coins), a water bottle and ten herbal biscuits wrapped in waxed paper together with a bolt cutter. He was wearing his national cycling team outfit with black weatherproofs on the outside.
    On the evening of the 27th of October 1970, anortherly wind was blowing. At midnight he tiptoed out of the flat, leaving a brief letter explaining to his parents that he would miss them, but that his desire to see the Western world was too