Shut Up, Legs!

by Jens Voigt

  That day couldn’t have worked out any better. Guys like Valverde were suddenly out of contention, and Cadel was our biggest challenger. But after the Pyrénées, Cadel didn’t know if he should focus on Carlos or Frank. It was just a brilliant team ride.

  Once Frankie took over the yellow jersey in Prato Nevoso, a lot of people probably thought we were going to ride for him from that point on. And a lot of teams probably would have done just that. But I think that’s where we really showed team unity and savvy.

  No stage illustrated that more than the final mountain stage up the Alpe d’Huez. Frank had won the same stage just two years earlier. And as I said, he was going into it this year with the yellow jersey on his back.

  He could easily have said, “Guys, this is my chance, and I deserve it. I deserve your full support now.” But that’s not at all what happened. Instead, both Frank and Andy said, “No, the plan was always to ride for Carlos, and we should still ride for Carlos.” Andy, who was probably the strongest on that day up Alpe d’Huez, said, “Hey, I’m still young. I have more Tours to come.”

  And Frankie said, “Yes, I know I’m in the lead now. But I only have 40 seconds on Cadel. And we still have a time trial to come. That’s not much. I might hold on to the jersey today, but it will be hard for me to keep it in the final time trial. Our best chance is to make the race hard as hell today. We need to sprint full gas into the bottom of the Alpe d’Huez, and then Carlos just has to explode, BANG, up the climb and take as much time as possible out of Cadel. He’s a better time trialer than me and has a better chance to win the race.”

  In all my years of cycling, the Schlecks demonstrated one of the greatest examples of sportsmanship I’ve ever seen in that race. What better example of team spirit can you have than Frankie sacrificing his yellow jersey for a teammate? Without the team, Carlos would have had trouble gaining so much time. But with Frank and Andy controlling the race, it was very hard for anyone to chase. And even if someone like Cadel had chased after Carlos, he would have had to contend with Frank and Andy sitting on his wheel, saving themselves for a big counterattack. Basically, we cornered Cadel. But you can only employ such tactics when you have a really strong team.

  From the beginning of the season, we just had a game plan and we never varied from it. Bjarne had total confidence in Carlos and put no pressure on him to get results earlier in the year. Heck, I remember in the Critérium du Dauphiné-Libéré, the big warm-up race for the Tour, Carlos wasn’t even in the top 20. A lot of people—even some of us on the team—wondered if he was really going to be a contender in the Tour. But Bjarne was unwavering. And as he so often was, Bjarne was right!

  That was just an amazing year for us. Carlos not only won the Tour but we also won the team classification. And the day we finally rolled into Paris all together was a dream come true. Like I said, being part of a winning Tour de France team is a dream for just about any professional cyclist, and it sure was for me. I just really wanted to live that experience once. There’s nothing like cruising into Paris, escorting the yellow jersey down past the River Seine under the summer sun and on up the Champs-Élysées.

  To make matters even better, that year was one of the rare occasions when we finished as an entire team in Paris, so we were all there to savor victory. I’ll never forget climbing up on the podium with Carlos in the middle of us and looking back and seeing the Arc de Triomphe. I remember saying to some of my teammates there and then, “Hey, maybe we should all just retire right here and now! Cycling will never be better than this!” And still today, it goes down as one of the top three memories of my career.

  Perhaps we really should have retired. Only weeks later, Carlos announced he was leaving us to ride for the Cervélo team the following year. I think he just feared that the Schlecks were getting stronger and stronger and there simply would be too many leaders for any one team. But it was a shame, because it broke up perhaps the greatest single team I was ever on.

  The Tour of Germany in 2006: my first win there. Look at my face—I really gave it my all. I could hardly raise my arm to celebrate my victory. (H. A. Roth)

  TOUR OF GERMANY

  “I won because I just wanted it more.”

  My role at CSC changed significantly from what it was in the Crédit Agricole days. Although I had a lot of support to race for myself throughout the year, when it came to the Tour de France, I was really there to ride for my team leaders. As a result, a lot of bike racing fans didn’t see me doing the “Jensie” thing and going out in breakaways like I had so often in years past.

  But at CSC, I actually had some of my greatest personal wins, too. And two of them came in my own national tour, the Tour of Germany. After the days of the Peace Race, the Tour of Germany was my country’s biggest stage race. Personally, I loved riding in front of my home crowd, but because I was always riding for foreign teams, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities. The Tour of Germany, however, gave me a great opportunity, and I was always supermotivated to compete in it.

  It may come as a surprise, because my career has been so international, but I am very proud to be German. Even though I spent my entire career riding on foreign teams, I always considered Germany my home. And even though I really enjoyed my six years living with the boys in Toulouse, there was never a doubt in my mind that I would eventually return to Germany and settle down there. After all, you are what you are. And not many people can just pick up, leave everything behind, and live the rest of their lives in another country.

  That pride corresponds with my love for the Tour of Germany. Now, early in my career, the Tour of Germany came before the Tour de France, but midway through, they moved it to just after the Tour. That changed things for me because, generally speaking, I usually came out of the Tour in really great condition. So when I was at CSC, Bjarne said, “Look, Jens, considering how strong you are in the Tour, I think you could really do something in the Tour of Germany.” Bjarne was one of those directors who could really give you confidence. And he was capable of finding qualities in riders that the riders themselves couldn’t even imagine.

  Traditionally, after the Tour, there are a bunch of criteriums, sort of like exhibition races for the stars of the Tour. They pay a start fee, so there’s good money to be made. But you can get sucked into a downward spiral if you do too many of them, because they’re exhausting. And at the end of the day, the results don’t even matter because they don’t carry any points on the International Cycling Union calendar.

  So, in 2006, I decided that instead of wasting a lot of my energy on these criterium races, I would just do a couple of them to keep my body used to the rhythm of racing. That allowed me to focus mostly on maintaining my condition through the Tour of Germany.

  I’ll never forget that race. Right after the Tour, I flew to Dortmund, where Egon, my dad, picked me up. I had one criterium in Ratingen, a town near Dortmund, on Monday, and one the next night, too. But otherwise, I did some easy rides for the rest of the week and watched my diet so I could stay as close to my Tour de France race weight as possible.

  My dad stayed the whole week with me. He did all the driving and guarded my spare wheels during this criterium while I was out training. Some days he went grocery shopping, cleaned my bike, and washed my car. He told me to not stay too long at the sponsor parties and to only drink Apfelschorle, a really common drink in Germany that is half apple juice and half sparkling water. He was really taking care of me and supporting me in every way. On a rest day he kept me company, visiting the Cologne Zoo. He was my mate for the whole week and the key part to my success the following week during the Tour of Germany.

  The Tour of Germany started the next weekend. The first day was a rainy road stage. I lost about 10 seconds but was still close to the leaders. Then, a couple of days, later I got in a three-man break in the final kilometers and won the stage.

  I had studied the final kilometers in the road book before the stage and knew it finished on a sort of bike path, so if I came out of the
last corner first, it would be very hard to pass me before the finish. That’s exactly what I did, and it worked out perfectly, because I won the stage and moved into third or fourth place. A couple of days later, we had our first mountaintop finish. Levi Leipheimer, an American on the German Gerolsteiner team, won the stage, but I managed to finish in the top five that day and move into the race lead.

  The next day was the queen climbing stage, finishing up on top of the Arlberg Pass in Austria. That was a very hard finish for me because, as you know, I’m not a pure climber. I got a bit lucky that year because the race organizers canceled the next-to-last climb because of snow, so I just had to focus on making it up that one big climb at the end. On the final climb, I got dropped. But I knew that the road leveled off near the top when we went through a tunnel. So I knew that I had a really good chance to catch back up. While it’s a known fact that I am not a natural born climber, maybe not too many know that I am pretty good at false, flat mountains. Since it flattened out a little at the top of that mountain, I knew as soon as I could go back into the big chain ring, I was going to be good. No little 65 kg climber was going to beat me there.

  And that’s exactly what happened. Instead of going into the red just to hold on to the leaders, I limited my losses and dropped back on the steepest section. But then I really attacked once the road flattened out. I finally caught the leaders in the last 500 meters. And I could see that they were just demoralized to see me return. I just kept on going and ended up winning the sprint. I could barely raise one arm in victory, and two meters beyond the line, I was at a complete standstill. That’s how wasted I was. But my performance was good enough to lock up my first victory in the Tour of Germany.

  On German TV, the commentator Ulli Jantsch quipped, “The last time I saw a comeback like that was in Ben-Hur!”

  The only problem was that there was some skepticism about my win, because the Tour of Germany came on the heels of a scandal-ridden 2006 Tour de France. The Tour started with Operation Puerto and saw Germany’s biggest star, Jan Ullrich, kicked out of the race even before it started, as well as my teammate Ivan Basso and the entire Liberty Seguros team. And then, let’s not forget, the winner, Floyd Landis, failed a drug test only days after the Tour, just days before the start of the Tour of Germany.

  The press was really split. Some really celebrated my victory. But some of the media were skeptical that a big rider like me, someone who isn’t a really strong climber, could win the Tour of Germany. But I had finished 48th in the Tour de France, and only 2 of the 47 riders who finished in front of me were at the start of the Tour of Germany. I was supermotivated not only because it was my national tour but also because I lived like a monk the week after the Tour de France to stay focused. So I knew how I had won.

  Unfortunately, things only got worse the following year, because everyone was so burned out after learning all the details of Operation Puerto and the Landis affair. Nonetheless, I returned to the Tour of Germany as the defending champion. Now my win the first year may have come as a surprise to some, but when I came back the next year, everybody knew I was there to win. Fortunately for me, there was a team time trial early in the race, something my team was always good at.

  On the very first stage, I surprised everybody when I grabbed a bonus second at the bonus sprint midway through the stage. It was a flat stage, and everybody knew it would be a field sprint. But nobody expected me to attack at the intermediate sprint. Yet that’s what I did! A kilometer away I just launched. Everybody was looking at me like, “What the fuck, Jens!” But I got that single extra bonus second, which came in handy in the team time trial the next day.

  Because the first stage was a sprint stage, nearly everybody would go into the time trial with the same time. But that one little second moved us up in the team classification and allowed us to start later in the team time trial (TTT), which is always a big advantage because it allows you to gauge your times on the time splits all the other teams clocked when they left earlier. So you see, I may have looked stupid going for that measly bonus second, but there was real method to my madness.

  And then, of course, we had another huge advantage going into the team time trial—Fabian Cancellara. Fabian was simply the world’s best time trialist in 2007, so you can only imagine the advantage that gave us in a team time trial.

  It was so impressive riding behind Fabian when he was in good shape.

  I still have this vision of going downhill behind him on the TTT. Fabian was leading, and we were doing 75 kilometers an hour down this hill! The only problem was that Fabian was doing 80 kilometers an hour and we were losing ground to him. I just kept thinking, “I can’t go any faster! I don’t want to go any faster! I’m scared shitless!” This TTT wasn’t on a highway or anything. No, we were on some small roads. And in case you didn’t know, time trial bikes don’t handle as well as normal road bikes to begin with. So when I say I was scared shitless, I was really scared! I was behind Fabian, and I lost about 50 meters by the time we got to the bottom of the hill. But the guys behind me lost 50 meters on me, so we were going crazy fast. And then at the finish, Fabian took this massive pull with 3 kilometers to go until the final 600 meters. He was just spinning along at 60 kilometers an hour. We were going at warp speed! I remember that whole time just saying to myself, “Please don’t pull off, Fabian! Please don’t pull off!” I knew I’d never be able to pull through and keep that speed.

  But, in the end, we kept things together enough to win the time trial and, thanks to my little bonus second from the day before, I took over the race lead.

  Now, of course, there was still a lot of racing ahead of us, and one stage included this supersteep Rettenbachferner climb. I’ll never forget that climb, because on that day, I used the smallest gear ever in my career, a 38 x 28! But that was my only chance to get to the top with any chance of winning the overall race.

  What I didn’t know going into the stage was that, on this day, I would receive two amazing, unexpected gifts. The first came from the race organizers, who, fortunately for me, did not plan for other climbs on the stage (so as in the year before, I could just focus on the final climb).

  Then I got a gift from Levi Leipheimer, who was now riding for the Discovery Channel team. Basically, they did all the work all day long. From the start of the stage, Discovery just went to the front and rode tempo all day. Now I’m in the yellow jersey with CSC. We’re not exactly a shabby team. But Discovery didn’t ask for any help. Obviously, Levi wanted to win the stage and take the jersey over on that stage. But it worked out perfectly for us, as we were able to just sit and save our energy for the final climb.

  When we finally hit the climb, Levi’s teammates just blew up one after the other, POW, POW, POW!

  Suddenly, after only four switchbacks, Levi’s team was gone, but I still had with me my teammate, Chris Anker Sørensen, a brilliant climber who can really hurt himself. Suddenly, there were only 10 riders left.

  Chris went to the front and just drilled it. And then I prepared to make what to this day I would call one of my greatest moves—the bluff! With Chris on the front, I took about 10 deep breaths and then rode up alongside him with my water bottle in my hand and said really loudly, so everyone could hear, “Hey, Chris, I think we’re good here. We dropped just about everybody and I’m in yellow, so we can let the others do the work if they want. If they want to attack me, let them attack. We’re good!” I was talking to Chris, but really, I was talking at Levi, making sure he could hear me.

  So we eased up a little bit and a couple of guys did attack, but my main rivals like Levi or the Italian, Damiano Cunego, actually lost time.

  At the end, I looked unbeatable, but as I said, with the recent wave of doping scandals, some were skeptical. The irony was that while I may have looked invincible, I was actually bluffing!

  When I think back on my two victories in the Tour of Germany, I think I won because I just wanted it more. It was my national tour, so I was supermotivated, and a
s a result, I remained focused after the Tour de France and maintained my condition.

  I, of course, was sensitive to the weight of suspicion. In 2006, Ivan Basso, my team leader, was suspended from the Tour, and Floyd Landis, the Tour winner, tested positive. And in the 2007 Tour, the big prerace favorite, Alexander Vinokourov, was expelled from the race for a positive test. At one point before the Tour of Germany in 2007, I even asked Kim Andersen, my team director, if it wouldn’t just be better if I finished third or fourth. But Kim just said, “No, we don’t race that way. If you have the legs to win, then win. We’ll answer questions later. But we’re not going to throw away a race because your head says no.”

  Cycling was getting so complicated that you would find yourself asking stupid questions like “If I can win, should I win?” It was just so confusing, pretty much for everyone.

  At the end of 2007 T-Mobile, the biggest German team, removed their name from their team jersey. They honored their contract, and the team continued as Highroad, but T-Mobile no longer wanted to associate their brand with our sport. And the same thing happened with Lidl, the supermarket chain that was the title sponsor of the Tour of Germany. In 2007, the second year I won, they removed their logo from the yellow jersey and replaced it with a motto, “Stay Clean.” And the Tour of Germany came to an end a year later, after the 2008 edition.

  I’ll never forget that, during the 2007 race, a television commentator said, “Well, we sure hope Jens Voigt can live up to the motto on his yellow jersey.” I was just outraged. I thought, “How dare you throw shit on me for no reason just because you think everybody is in the same boat!” Things were bad!

  It was about this time that I decided to stop being the rider representative for the CPA. I just didn’t want to be a spokesperson for the sport anymore. I was getting criticized from all sides. If I spoke out against doping, somebody was bound to say, “Are you insane? Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?” But then someone else would say, “Hey, why don’t you say more?” I’m just too thin-skinned to handle that kind of responsibility. I’m too sensitive. It was hurting me, poisoning my soul. Constantly answering questions about doping was just killing me.