by Jens Voigt
I remember how, when the Wall came down, people were saying, “Well, now we have the freedom, but we don’t have the money to express that freedom!” And they were right. Sure, in theory, they had the freedom to suddenly pick up and go to Hawaii, but they didn’t necessarily have the money to buy the plane tickets!
So once the Wall came down, all of us East Germans quickly realized that there was potential for life to be better, but not for everybody. There was a lot more stress, and we had a lot more responsibility for ourselves. We had to work hard.
In East Germany, you really didn’t have to work hard at all. It was just a no-go that you could get fired. There was no unemployment in East Germany. Can you imagine that today? Even if you were lazy or just plain stupid, the state would create a job for you. That was definitely one of the advantages of the Communist system.
But while the Communist system sometimes looked good on paper, unfortunately, it was run by human beings. And so, inevitably, it just went to shit! That’s the way it is with us people. The idea was that everybody would work as hard as he could for the common good. You know, just out of their own good conscience and goodwill, everyone would strive to be better. The stronger would unite to pull the weaker up. It’s a beautiful idea in theory, but it just didn’t turn out that way.
And, of course, life wasn’t all good. It was filled with propaganda and surveillance, and the state really controlled individual lives. Officially, it was illegal to listen to West German radio stations or watch movies from the West, although we did have access to certain authorized films, books, or music. Now my parents were pretty relaxed about it and would let us watch the movies coming directly from the West. But we had to promise not to talk about it in school the next day. Like I said, if those radio and television antennas were pointed in the wrong direction—toward the West—the police would show up at your door. Often, we just had to point the antennas to the eastern side, even though we knew that western reception would not be as good, because if your antenna was pointed east, it was impossible to get good reception from the west.
It was pretty scary, really. Heck, I remember one day, maybe 10 years after the Wall came down, my dad was listening to Radio Hamburg and working in the garage. All of a sudden, a police car drove by, and my dad just jumped! It was pure reflex. “Oh my God!” he said. “Can you believe that after all these years I’m still afraid to listen to the wrong radio station?” Can you imagine how much fear had been burned into his brain? How strong the control and the fear were? “I have to laugh at myself,” he said. “But I’m just shocked at how deeply it’s still inside me!”
On days when we had state elections, the police would show up at our door if we didn’t vote before noon. I remember my grandma, Frieda. She was a bit of a rebel. And she would just forget about the elections. She was strong, just tough as nails, and she was always working on the farm. She would be busy feeding her chickens or something, and the police would come and take her to vote! Frieda also had three sisters living in West Germany, and although she was pressured to cut the ties, she always refused and continued to correspond with them even though that, too, was not looked upon well. Mail did circulate between the two countries, and we always got letters or Christmas boxes from our relatives in West Germany, although I’m sure they were opened and read by some customs officer prior to delivery.
But my grandma told it like it was. I remember in school they taught us that after the Wall went up, all the farmers just donated all their equipment to the collective. But Frieda told us otherwise. “Oh no,” she said. “They [the state] just came at three in the morning and took it all away! They didn’t ask us anything. They just came and took everything away!”
You know, it took me until I was 22 to understand that Hitler and Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact and split up Poland during World War II. That’s not what we learned in school! In East Germany, they taught us that Hitler attacked Poland and the good, wise Stalin went into the eastern side of Poland to save as many Polish people as he could from the hands of the Nazis. What they didn’t tell us was that when the Nazi and Russian troops finally came together in central Poland, they held victory parades together and basically chopped the country in two and shared the spoils of their success. No, they didn’t teach us that in school!
It wasn’t until well after the Wall came down, until my own kids were actually in school themselves, that I learned things were quite different. I remember going to the library, reading up on what really happened in World War II, and just being astonished. They lied to a whole generation!
One thing I have learned from all this, however, is that the winners write the history books. That’s the way it is in life. That’s the way it is in cycling, for that matter. And when I was growing up in East Germany, the winner was Communism!
So, obviously, not everything was great in East Germany. And looking back, I think in some ways I was quite lucky, because I had some sympathetic teachers. The fact that my parents weren’t card-carrying members of the Communist Party and we had family in West Germany didn’t win me any favors in the state sports school. And already, as a young kid, little “Jensie” would also say whatever came into his head and speak his mind.
But, fortunately, my homeroom teacher, Dieter Richnow, took a liking to me and was aware that the truth was not exactly what was being taught in school. I would say, “Ah no! My grandma says that the state just came and took away the tools!” Of course, he couldn’t officially agree with me and in class had to say things like, “Ah no, the state would never do something like that!” But he didn’t report me or anything. If he had, they could have just sent me home! Game over!
But like I said, what I remember most about life in East Germany was how relaxed it was at the time. At least when it came to stress levels, the old system was pretty successful, because, well, there was a lot less stress. And that had a lasting impact on how I later viewed my financial situation as a professional.
Maybe I could have become richer, for example, by being more tenacious or by changing teams more often. But I’ve always been happy with where I’ve been, and as a professional cyclist, I’ve basically been happy with the amount of money I’ve been making at any given time. Sure, I probably missed some opportunities to make more money. But those opportunities generally bring with them more stress, which I’ve always tried to avoid.
And that comes back to my upbringing, because when it comes to money, I have always been of the mind that if I’m making enough, why do I need more? It’s like, how many beds do you need to sleep in? Why would I need a house with 15 bedrooms?
Materialism really only came to me later in life when I had kids, because having six kids in a city such as Berlin forced me to be more aware of money. The cost of living for six children has a way of imposing financial concerns on you. So the days when I could just float along were long over. Yet even with the pressures of supporting a family, I’ve always tried to keep finances in perspective. I wanted to make decent money, sure, but not at the expense of time with my family.
STARTING CYCLING
“I owe it all to the pigs!”
Jens as seen by Jan Schaffrath (schoolmate of Voigt’s, former professional cyclist, Etixx–Quick-Step team director):
I’ve known Jens since he was eight or nine years old. We were born on the same exact day, the same exact year, so in some ways, we were like brothers when we were growing up in East Germany. We both started out in long-distance running, and at a very young age, we would be fighting it out for victory in cross-country races. And then a couple of years later, we ran into each other at the sports school and became really good friends.
At first, sports school was really hard for him. He came from the country and was all alone in Berlin, and he really missed his parents. Me, I lived in Berlin, so I went home at the end of the day, unlike Jens, who lived in the dormitory. So my family kind of took him in, especially that first year, and he often would come home with me.
That
first year, he really struggled just to keep his spot at the school. It was really competitive, and sometimes fights would break out. I just kept encouraging him, because I knew that he was stronger than most of the guys there, and sure enough, at the end of the year, Jens made the cut, while some of the others were sent home. He just wanted it more!
When I see him today, I often think back on the years when we were growing up. And the one thing that never changed with Jens was his desire to win. It didn’t matter if it was cross-country, soccer, or cycling—he always wanted to win! I’ll never forget that. At the sports school, we played a lot of soccer in the winter. And Jens always played to win. He was far from the best player on a technical level, but he was just running nonstop all over the field, trying to make a play. He just wouldn’t give up. It didn’t matter if we were four goals behind. Jens did not know how to give up. Defeat just was not part of his vocabulary. And it still isn’t today!
Like just about every German boy, I played soccer first. But I lacked hand-eye coordination, which is kind of important in that sport. And I certainly wasn’t good enough to dribble around defenders and score goals, which is pretty much all boys want to do when they first start out. If I wanted to be easy on myself, I would say I was just hopeless! But being awful at soccer did have one hidden benefit. It helped steer me toward endurance sports, which, as you know, I was pretty good at!
Not that I knew it at the time, of course. No, at nine years old, all that I, or anybody close to me, knew was that without soccer, I had way too much time on my hands. And way too much energy to burn!
I, of course, thought I was being funny and creative when, for example, I tried to ride a local farmer’s sheep like a horse. I felt like John Wayne!
At the time, pirate movies and westerns were our favorite movies to watch when West German TV reception was good. But we couldn’t talk about them in school because they were strictly forbidden. Are you kidding, John Wayne and Communism? No, they simply did not mix. Standing up for yourself the way Wayne did. Taking justice into his own hands. No, that is not what East German authorities wanted to promote!
Little misadventures, such as riding the farmer’s sheep, did not amuse my teachers or my parents, and just plain got me in a lot of trouble. In the eyes of my teachers I was just too energetic. So one day, my homeroom teacher came to my parents and said, “Listen, your son has way too much energy! He has to find some sport to burn it off. He just has to!” Now, back in the day, they called me a wild child. Today they have another name for it. They would have diagnosed me with ADD in a split second, bounced me from therapy to therapy, and prescribed me drugs until I seemed normal.
In East Germany, however, there just wasn’t that kind of personalized attention. Instead, running became my medicine. Right away, I found that I was pretty good at running medium and long distances and immediately started winning local races and placing in bigger events. Without cycling, I would definitely have been a 5,000- or 10,000-meter runner.
My track-and-field career came to a premature end, however, when I failed to meet the desired objective in a long-jump test one day. My coach, convinced that I was not giving my all, punished me by making me run laps. And, with each lap, my anger just mounted and mounted, and finally I quit and never returned.
Looking back on it now, I still think I was right. I mean, how many times have you heard “Jensie” get criticized for not giving his all? I just don’t do that! That’s just not me. And that attitude was instilled very early on, because my dad hammered it into me. “Son,” he’d say, “if you’re going to do something, then do it all the way!” Egon was all about dispensing old-school wisdom, and he was about as old school as it gets. “Boys don’t cry!” That was another. And it worked on me, because since I’ve grown up, only one thing has made me cry—the birth of my children!
Soon enough, I was looking for another sport. And one day, the cycling club BSK Traktor Dassow showed up at my school, the POS Ernst Puchmüller—named inevitably after some anti-Fascist from World War II. The coach gave a little presentation about the cycling team. And even better than that, they offered these brand-new metallic silver racing bikes to everybody who would sign up the same afternoon.
And hey, if you’re an almost-10-year-old boy from a simple working-class family and somebody offers you a brand-new free bike, what can you say besides “Hell yeah, I want to sign up!”?
A free racing bike? That was so awesome! And I will never forget the brand. It was Diamant. But that’s easy to remember, because it was the only bike company we had in East Germany.
So there I was with my new Diamant. I couldn’t have been any happier. Obviously, at that age, I knew nothing about Gitane, Pinarello, or any other bike manufacturer, really. I was just happy to have my own bike to ride. After a few weeks of training, we did our first race, the state championship uphill time trial. It was held about 200 kilometers east of Dassow. And I won!
It’s funny, though, because when I think back on it today, what I remember most about it is not the race itself, but the fact that I had to wait until I got home before I could tell my parents. Why, you wonder? Well, for the simple reason that we didn’t have a phone. Of course, this was well before the age of the Internet and mobile telephones. But damn, my parents didn’t even have a landline!
In those first years, when I was 10 or 11 years old, I honestly think I won every single race I started, save maybe the national championships. I was just stronger than the other boys. I would go to the front, and nobody could follow. When I was 12, I still won, say, three-quarters of the races. Sports were fun. It was just like a game. Soon enough, I was invited to try out for one of the elite national sports schools, a huge opportunity for any kid in East Germany, because sports played a huge role in Communist society.
But then, in 1984, some strange pig disease, Maul-und-Klauenseuche, spread throughout the area, and the entire town of Dassow got quarantined! It sounds funny to talk about this today, but the pig disease actually played a huge role in my career. Suddenly, I couldn’t train. Suddenly, I lost all my fitness because of it. We couldn’t leave town, and the authorities really didn’t even want us playing sports in town. The only problem was that the pig disease came at about the same time I was taking the tests to get into the sports school. I did manage to pass the test, but I wasn’t as good as I had been. And all of a sudden, I really had to work!
So there was little “Jensie,” this 14-year-old kid going to the KJS Ernst Grube sports school in Berlin. Just about every school in East Germany was named after some martyr who died at the hand of the Nazi regime, and Ernst was one of them.
Berlin was the big city, and leaving home for the first time when I was just 14 was not easy. It was the first time I had seen buildings higher than two or three stories, and in my eyes, that was a pretty big deal. And there were a lot of changes. I was the youngest student at the boarding school. And, of course, all the older kids were telling me where my place was in the pecking order. Back in Dassow, I was one of the leaders in the school, because I was a good student, and I was good in sports. But in Berlin, I was no leader! It wasn’t easy. I was getting into fights and also getting worn down with studying and training all the time. At the same time, my body was growing.
And the result of all this was that it was a difficult time for me. All of a sudden I was just managing to get by, to pass the tests each year—to do the required times in time trialing, and so on. So I wasn’t as good as I had been, and that was hard for me to accept.
The way cycling was structured, there was no sports school in the northern region where I came from. So we had to compete with the kids from all around Berlin. And it was very competitive! After the first test, only 45 kids were left, and after the second, only about 30 kids. Then they sent us to this sort of nationwide mini-Olympics in Dresden, and only 10 to 15 kids from each region were selected to compete. They tested not only our cycling but also our general athletic strength and went so far as to do these sophisticated
morphology tests to predict how our bodies would mature physically in the coming years. Those tests actually helped me, because I was a late developer. Some kids were already shaving at the age of 14. Not me! Because these tests were based on a sort of curve that took into account your current level of maturity, I was able to score points against kids who were simply more developed physically.
So I made the cut, and in 1984, I was sent off to sports school. But sports weren’t just games anymore. And suddenly, I had to work very hard just to keep up. I had to really work, really sacrifice, then go get my head kicked in. Then I had to go back to the start line and get my head kicked in again. It was tough, but the experience taught me a lot about sacrifice and suffering, two things that have come in handy throughout my career.
I often think that the sports school was my own school for suffering. As I said, I had to struggle just to survive, so I think that over all these years, I learned to set my pain threshold higher than other people’s. After doing just that for 15 or 20 years, well, I think I have a pain threshold that is 10 to 20 percent higher than most others. I don’t know if you can scientifically prove it, but I totally believe it. It makes sense to me. That’s the way I feel. By just repeating the level of suffering, the body goes, “Okay, I know how this feels. Now go farther.”
You also see the world differently when you’re down. When you’re down a little bit, there are always people who will kick you. But other people will reach out to you and say, “Hey, let me give you a helping hand. I can help you out of this.” And in moments like that, you discover who is true, who is false, who is a friend, and who is just a wannabe friend.
One of my best friends at the time was Jan Schaffrath. He was my age. But he was a superhero of the sports school. Ah, he was just so good. Unbelievable! He could time trial. He won road races. He won on the track. He was superfast and could beat professionals such as Olaf Ludwig or Erik Zabel while he was still an amateur. He was just a huge talent. And he was my friend! He was a good friend to have, because he really stuck up for me when it came to bullying. And as a result, I often worked for him. We have remained friends for life. After racing for Team Telekom and Milram, he has gone on to be a successful team director. He’s a great rider and a great guy!