Shut Up, Legs!

by Jens Voigt

  And it was contagious! It could be cold and raining, and he would say, “Oh my God, man! I’m just going to smash it!” And he would do just that! Or he could just be watching some stupid cartoon about a cow and a chicken in the hotel bedroom and you would get this hilarious running commentary while you were taking a shower. I remember he didn’t really ever go to sleep. He just became unconscious. There was this sudden shift in being, one from being this sort of manic child to just being dead to the world! And then he would wake up in the morning fully recharged. He was just amazing!

  We roomed together a lot. I think somebody thought he would be good for me. And they were right!

  Barely after arriving in France, I was off to my first training camp with the GAN team. And things didn’t go all that smoothly, at least not that first day, that first ride. We were off somewhere in the north of France, like in Normandy, at a place called the Center Parc. This was before the days when training camps were always held in Spain or someplace warm, and my first memory is of the cold.

  But what I remember more than the weather was that first ride with the team. To this day, I wish I could redo that ride. There were 17 of us, not 18, riding two abreast. And as one of the new pros, I was the odd man out, the one guy riding alone in the pace line. And I’m riding in the middle of the pack, when all of a sudden, this big truck comes by with a sailboat on it. And I like boats, especially sailboats. They just look BEAUTIFUL! Just looking at them gives me some peace of mind. And so there it was, this huge, long truck with a sailboat on it. I thought, “Wow!” I just looked back and watched it go by. And boy, was that the wrong thing to do! That was it! I just watched the boat, looked back, touched a wheel in front of me, and crashed. I crashed on my first training camp! Heck, I crashed on my first training ride with my new team!

  I was so embarrassed! I was like, “Oh my God! They’re going to fire me! Oh my God!”

  But everyone was so supportive. They all stopped and came back. Guys kept saying, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” And I just jumped up and said, “Ah yeah, yeah, it’s nothing! Of course I’m okay. Just a little blood on my knee, that’s all!” I felt terrible, just terrible! I’d crashed on my first day. Chris Boardman was there. Chris was a huge champion, but he was also very British and had that oh-so-British humor. And he was just standing there saying, “Ah, that’s it. You just failed the test! End of contract!” It was all in good humor, but Chris was my team leader. So that was how my first day of training went. A truly auspicious beginning, no?

  I remember at that first training camp, they put me in the same room with Chris, probably because he spoke good English. And, actually, we became very close. But down in the main hall, I would sit down with my French teammates, such as Anthony Langella and Sébastien Hinault. And in the evenings, I would get out my notebook and show them my drawings. I would point to a body part on my little stick-figure drawing and ask them how to say it in French. They laughed a lot at me, but I think they appreciated the effort I was making. At least that’s what I kept telling myself!

  Then, directly after the training camp, I moved straight to Toulouse, where a lot of my teammates were living. On that little itty-bitty salary, I couldn’t even think about getting an apartment on my own, but that’s when I learned just how cool and open the Australians could be, because Stuart O’Grady and Henk Vogels just took me in like I was one of their own. Jay Sweet was there, too, although he was riding for the Aubervilliers team. So I just moved in with the boys for the first month.

  Roger Legeay had been very direct and really wanted me to move to France. He said, “Look, you have a one-year contract. You’re not a young kid anymore. I would like you to move closer to the team. We’ll have a better idea of what you’re up to, and you’ll get better connected to our team.”

  I just said, “Yeah, okay then.” That’s all it took to cram my entire life into that little Opel. But then one of my French teammates at the time, Frédéric Moncassin, just said, “Yeah, well come live with us down in Toulouse.”

  Fred was the star sprinter on the team, and he really saved me down there, because getting started in France wasn’t easy. To be able to rent an apartment, you need to have a French bank account. But to have a bank account, you need an address. And for both of those, you need to have pay slips for the last three months. Since I had just arrived in France, that was impossible, but Fred would come with us—me and a couple of other new riders—when we were looking for an apartment and say, “Look, I can vouch for these guys. They might not have all their pay slips just yet, but they’re just neo-pros. They’re going to be good.” So finally I was able to get an apartment with Jay Sweet and Marcel Gono in a little village about 20 kilometers south of Toulouse.

  But while the GAN team was incredibly well organized, life with the Australians was often quite the opposite. Actually, in my case, my first year with a big pro team represented a double culture shock. Not only was I training and racing in France, but I was living with a bunch of Australians. And let me tell you, that took some getting used to all on its own! I have such great memories of those early days, but hmm, how shall I say, it wasn’t always ideal for getting the rest and relaxation needed to be at my best.

  I’ll never forget the night I returned after my first professional win. I finally made it back to Toulouse after a very long, cold day in the rain. I was happy to see the boys, but I was also really tired. Everyone was stoked when I came through the door, and I was hungry, so I said, “Hey, boys! It’s the first victory for the house. Come on, I’ll take you out to dinner!” All was fine and dandy, but once we were at dinner, the boys were like, “Hey, it’s still the weekend. How about we just go to a little nightclub after?”

  I said, “Oh, okay boys, but let’s go in two cars, because I’m tired, and if you want to stay out very late, I might go home. I’ll go for a little while, but I can’t dance until 6:00 a.m.”

  As soon as we arrived at the club, we ordered a bottle of whiskey and some cola. By about midnight, I was fading pretty badly, so I said, “Okay, boys, I’m heading home!”

  But as I got up to leave, I saw them raise their hands to order another bottle, and oh boy, that was just the start of it.

  The next morning, I woke up and didn’t see their car. Naively, at first I wondered, “Hmm, I wonder where the boys are? Maybe they got a hotel room or something.” But soon enough, I saw that this was not the case. I heard noises in their rooms, and as soon as I looked at them, I knew it was going to be a whole other story. And I knew immediately that it wasn’t good! So I said, “Please, boys, tell me it’s not what I think it is!”

  One had a black eye. One had terrible whiplash. And they were like, “Ah, ah, we don’t know where the car is!” And I just said, “What? Did you have an accident?” And they were like, “Ah, ah, we think soo. . . ”

  Now I was not in the best shape myself. I had raced the day before and had a very long day. I guess you could say I was a little exasperated. And I said, “Are you kidding me? Come on, let’s go find the car!”

  And there it was, about 500 meters from the club, sitting on the median strip in the middle of a four-lane road. The car was just sitting in the grass, totaled. Honestly, I don’t even know how they got out of it alive!

  Trying to keep my composure, I remember saying, “Ah, hey boys, how did you make it home?”

  They explained to me how they just walked back to the nightclub and called a taxi to take them home.

  But then I started to think about the reality of the situation, and I said, “Boys, are you kidding me? You both have a three-month tourist visa in this country and it’s now April. Think about it! That’s one, two, three, four months! You two are officially ILLEGAL ALIENS! And to make matters worse, you were driving a car with outdated license plates. So you’re two illegal aliens driving an illegal car drunk, leaving the scene of an accident. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You guys are in SO MUCH TROUBLE!”

  Finally we got a towing company to come to
w the car. They obviously knew our situation, and we knew that they knew our situation. When we came back the following Monday, they just said, “Look, guys, the car is totaled. You can take the CD player, if you want, and we’ll keep the car for spare parts to cover the towing.” And considering that maybe only one door was still intact, I considered it a fair deal. It was really a close call, but just sort of a typical experience with the boys down in “Sydney-sur-Garonne”!

  But they were great guys, and they could really suffer on a bike. I mean, Jay was the kind of rider who could just turn himself inside out on a bike when he had to.

  Anyway, that was my initiation into my new Australian life in France. It was not the easiest way to move to a new country, but for the next six years, I always had a house or an apartment around Toulouse. The first year, I shared the apartment with Jay and Marcel, and then, when I got a better contract, I was able to get a place of my own and bring my wife and son down. After two years, Stephanie decided to go back to Berlin. But still I kept a place in Toulouse while I was at GAN and later Crédit Agricole. It was really and truly my home away from home!

  FIRST WIN

  “I’m not just a pretty face!”

  My first year of racing in the big leagues was not easy. This was the start of the 1998 season, and teams such as Festina were just heroes. But that was before the Festina affair broke and we realized how doped up they were. Racing was just full gas at that time, and trying to race on that level was no easy jump for me.

  But somehow I managed to get into a breakaway in my first race of the season, the Grand Prix la Marseillaise, with none other than Richard Virenque, the popular French rider and leader of Festina. I remember I accelerated going over this climb about 50 kilometers from the finish, and I actually dropped Virenque! Can you believe that? I actually dropped Richard Virenque in my first race of the year! I got over the top with another rider, Fabrice Gougot, and we waited on the top because it was too far to go to the finish. But I still ended up getting fourth that day, a decent start.

  Almost as important, though, was that I was pretty much the only finisher on my team, and suddenly guys were like, “Oh wow, the neopro with the bad haircut is actually pretty good!” Then we went straight to the Étoile des Bessèges, the first stage race of the year in France. And I finished eighth overall, which was a huge relief for me, because I was stressing about having only a one-year contract.

  Looking back on it now, knowing I had only one year probably helped me. It made me train really hard in the winter in an effort to prove myself, to find my place on the team and in the pecking order and all. I came ready to perform at the first race of the season.

  But my big break came a couple of months later when I got my first professional victory, and, as it turned out, the first win for the team of the season, at the Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco, the “Tour of the Basque country” in Spain. I’ll never forget that day, and it’s a race I can truly say that I have loved ever since!

  How I came up with that win is another story, though. Oh man! The whole week I was just SUFFERING! The racing was so hard! They were just going so fast! And again, this was all before the Festina affair exploded. The whole week I was just like, “Oh my God! I’m a worthless-piece-of-shit rider here!” I was getting dropped all the time, and by the last day, I was about an hour-and-a-half down. But then, the night before the last stage, I remember looking at the result sheets and seeing that only three guys from our team were left in the race, François Simon, Cédric Vasseur, and me. They’d already sent the team bus back home. The next day started with a short stage before the afternoon time trial. And I remember saying to the boys before the start, “I just go! I just go! It’s a short stage, and I’m so far down. I’m attacking!”

  It’s a standard late-race situation, where guys who are far down in the standings can attack, because the leaders don’t care if you get away and win a stage at that point. But you still have to be there. You have to make that breakaway. And I remember at the start that morning, it was raining and cold once again. And I was pretty much the only one in the whole peloton who didn’t have a rain jacket on. It was so obvious that I wanted to go, that I was going to attack! I had a thermal jacket but no rain jacket. Everyone else was there with long-sleeve rain jackets. As we rolled out toward the official start, I remember saying to myself, “Oh! I hope the neutral start doesn’t last too long, because everyone is going to see that I don’t have a rain jacket on. Everybody is going to realize that I want to attack! And as soon as we hit kilometer zero, I was just like, BANG!”

  After a kilometer or two, I went full gas and then looked back. There was only Jörg Jaksche on my wheel and Paul van Hyfte a little further back, yelling “Wait, wait!” So we waited for him and then started rolling.

  Laurent Jalabert and the ONCE team were leading the race, and as soon as they realized that the best guy in the breakaway was more than 15 minutes down, they gave us something like a six-minute lead, which is a lot for a 95-kilometer stage, so we clearly had a chance to stay away. Then there was a climb with about 20 kilometers to go, and I just attacked! And I managed to win the stage alone with more than a one-minute gap.

  It was just amazing! For one, this is the Basque country in northern Spain, where they’re just crazy about cycling. Even in the rain, they all showed up. It was packed! On the climb, everybody was in your face yelling “Venga, venga!” And Eurosport was broadcasting the race, so the whole time I was in the break, I knew my parents were watching back home in Germany. And I knew that they were on the edge of their seats! Talk about motivation!

  At one point when I was off, my team director, Serge Beucherie, came up alongside me and rolled down the window. He looked over at me and nodded and just said, “Impressionnant.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’ve got a plan here!”

  Now like I said, up until then, the team had had a shit race. At one point, though, Serge had to come up to me and pour hot tea over my fingers because I couldn’t shift my gears anymore. What a way to get your first professional win! And the Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco is definitely a good place to start winning, because outside the grand tours such as the Tour de France, it’s considered one of the hardest races in the world. There’s always a good field, and everyone who can climb even a little bit is in the Basque country that week!

  I might not have been one of the best riders in that race that year, but I was just waterproof! And one thing I learned early on in my racing career was that when it rains, 50 percent of the peloton has lost the race, because, well, they have lost motivation. And since I’m already better than 50 percent of the peloton, by pure logic, I’m already top 10! You know what I like to say sometimes? “Everything that’s sticky is good for me! Everything that makes you uncomfortable, whether it’s rain, mud, or snow, is good for me!”

  It’s not that I like all that stuff, mind you! No, actually it’s quite the contrary. I would love to be a sprinter, you know. I would love to be one of those guys who can just sit in the pack all day long adjusting the gel in his hair! It must be nice to simply sit in all day and then blow by everyone in the last 20 meters and get the win, get the podium, get the podium girls. Everybody loves you! That’s great! I would love to do that. I would even prefer that. But I can’t. It’s not given to me. I’ve got to do it the other way, the hard way.

  As you may know, I’m not just a pretty face! But for my entire career, everybody kept making the same mistake with me every time I attacked early. They’d say, “Oh, that’s Jensie going in another early attack. Let him go! We’ll catch him later.” But they rarely did.

  And sometimes, to be honest, I couldn’t believe it. I’d be like, “Are you kidding me? Are you going to let me do this to you again?”

  Now this was never more true than in the Critérium International race that I won five times. For three years in a row, at the very same spot, almost the same meter exactly, I would attack. And guys would come with me in the break and actually work with me. I couldn’t beli
eve it. I mean, how could they work with me? It was like the rabbit working with the fox until he gets eaten! The rabbit should run away. He should know he is going to get eaten. But for several years, the Critérium International was just like Christmas, my birthday, and my wedding day all wrapped into one! I’d be in a breakaway again, and I just knew I was going to win. All those people working so nicely with me, just waiting to get dropped by me again. Even the newspapers wrote about the exact spot I would attack. But it always worked! I couldn’t believe my luck!

  I remember one year, 2007 I think, I was up the road, and Alejandro Valverde had his whole team chasing me, but then he looked around and saw my teammate Frank Schleck on his wheel and said, “This is déjà vu! Jens is up the road. We’re chasing like mad. But we’re not getting any closer. And Jens is going to win again!” Frankie just smiled!

  Getting ready to start another stage in the Pyrenees in the 1998 Tour de France. (Courtesy of Jens Voigt)

  FIRST TOUR DE FRANCE

  “Is this what I signed up for?”

  When you race for a French team, there’s only one race that counts—the Tour de France. And from my first days on Team GAN, everything we did pointed to the Tour. And for just about every guy on that team, the primary goal was to make the Tour de France team. I was no exception, as I had been dreaming about the Tour for years!

  For me, the Tour de France just always held a sort of mystique. I remember my dad, Egon, telling me when I was growing up, “You know in the West they have another race as big as the Peace Race. They call it the Tour de France.” I was only 11 or 12, just getting into the sport, but I was already hooked. Of course, East German television would not cover the Tour, but I remember the newspapers would occasionally publish the top-five results of the Tour and then, since we lived by the border, we occasionally saw bits and pieces on West German television. This was back in the day when Bernard Hinault was winning. I had no idea how to pronounce the strange mix of vowels and consonants that made up his name. I remember thinking Hinault sounded something like “Heenawult”! That must have been in 1982, when he was winning everything. I remember thinking, “Hey, that guy must be pretty good!”