Once the Berlin Wall was down and the Soviet era came to an end, the Peace Race had to find a new place for itself amidst the sudden upsurge activity that followed the decades of imposed order. Economic realities bit particularly hard. The unlimited government funding was suddenly a thing of the past and there was the pressing need to find sponsorship to cover the very substantial cost of running a major stage race. The most immediate result was the shrinking format of the race, no more bold journeys from Moscow to Berlin, no more sports extravaganzas in the stage finish cities, and gone was the race caravan that rivaled that of the Tour de France.  But the Great Race lived on, albeit in a diminished capacity. The race was reduced from the undisputed position of the premier amateur stage race in the world to a lowly almost local event with the lowest available UCI international stage race ranking of 2.5 in 1995. But beaten? Never! 

The Open Era did take its toll, in particular on the early 1990's editions of the Peace Race. The fans were still keen to see what they remembered as the Great Spring Festival of Sport, but by 1992 only 91 riders appeared at the Peace Race start and the race itself had been reduced to mere 10 stages. Then, in 1994, small professional teams, like the Czech-Australian, ZVVZ-Giant, began to take part in the "May Stages".  This brought much renewed vigor to the fading "Old Race". No one was surprised then when the ZVVZ-Giant's German rider, Jens Voigt, took the Yellow Jersey that year, while their Australian sprinter Robbie McEwen won three (out of the 10 offered) stages. Next year (1995) saw the hard fought victory by Czechoslovak rider, Pavel Padrnos, of the TICO Bayer team, over Dariusz Baranowski and Thomas Brozyna of Poland. Then, in 1996, Steffen Wesemann (GER), the winner of the much depleted 1992 event, returned to the Peace Race, now as a member of the crack German Team Telekom and the Peace Race Open Era arrived in earnest. Wesemann won that year and again in 1997 - supported as he was by what then arguably was the "best team in the game".

With the 1998 edition of the Peace Race, suddenly the Great Race began to come alive again with echoes of past glories. It was in 1998 that two great German riders lined up at the race start in Poznan (Poland): Steffen Wesemann and Uwe Ampler. Both had three Peace Race overall victories under the belt and both wanted to equal Ryszard Szurkowski's 23 years old record of four wins. Where Wesemann could count on the support of one of the world's best professional teams, German Telekom, led by the 1996 Tour de France winner, Bjarne Riis (DEN), Ampler, on the other hand, rode on the small Div II Polish outfit Mroz. Much was written about this David and Goliath contest which ended up with Uwe Ampler's resounding triumph in Erfurt. For my money, not since Nenco Christov (BUL), in 1957, has an individual won the Yellow Jersey against such odds. In any case, 1998 was the watershed year for the "new" Peace Race: great sporting contest, passionate support by fans and, for the first time, a successful venture into the territories formerly parts of the West Germany.

As for the future, who knows what it will bring? One can but hope that the Second Golden Age of the Great Race is not so far off and maybe, just maybe, we might yet see the truly Grand Tour traversing Europe from Moscow to Paris, as was once dreamt in the young and heady days of the late 1960's.