lit a candle 12h agoMy dad just called me out of nowhere to tell me Schorsch died, I didn't even know he was German until today. Showed me this grainy clip once of the 1982 final in LA, I was probably ten. He kept saying 11th place like it was a win.
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Georg Hack, known throughout German motorcycle racing as Schorsch, was a West German speedway and long-track rider from Landshut in Bavaria. He reached the final of the Individual Speedway World Championship in 1982, rode in eight Long Track World Championship finals between 1977 and 1985, won two bronze medals with…
Georg Hack, known throughout German motorcycle racing as Schorsch, was a West German speedway and long-track rider from Landshut in Bavaria. He reached the final of the Individual Speedway World Championship in 1982, rode in eight Long Track World Championship finals between 1977 and 1985, won two bronze medals with West Germany in the Speedway World Team Cup and was a mainstay of the AC Landshut side that dominated the German Speedway Bundesliga for more than a decade.
He was born in Landshut on 20 February 1950 and began racing in the early 1970s, riding internationally from 1974. That year he won the Bundesliga with AC Landshut, the first of many league titles with his home club, which also finished first in 1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1984 and 1986. He earned 26 international caps for West Germany and rode in the British top flight for the Ipswich Witches in 1978, 1979 and 1983.
His most remarkable season came in 1982, when he rode in three world finals within two weeks. He finished 11th in the Individual Speedway World Championship final at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and helped West Germany to bronze in the World Team Cup final at White City in London, repeating the team bronze the side had won at Olching in 1981. On the long track his best results were fifth places in the world finals of 1979 and 1980. Riders and fans knew him as Bretter-Schorsch, Schorsch the Plank, because he never moved an inch from his chosen line and more than once ended up against the fence.
Hack retired from racing in 1985 and worked in the design department at BMW, where he played a major part in developing the first BMW S1000RR superbike. He stayed close to the sport as a coach at AC Landshut and as team manager of the German national speedway team, passing his experience on to generations of younger riders. His son, Georg Hack Jr., also raced speedway.
AC Landshut announced that Hack died on the morning of 2 November 2026, aged 76. No cause of death was made public.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and SPEEDWEEK.com.
Photos
1Georg Hack in his racing leathers
by People Forever
Your dad has good taste, that whole era of speedway was wild