by Jens Voigt
Alone again, this time on Stage 5 of the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2014. It was in moments like this where I really started feeling my age as it got harder and harder to bridge the gaps. (James Startt)
THE ART OF THE LONG BREAKAWAY
“I’m not slowing down for any raindrops here!”
Jens as seen by Lars Michaelsen (onetime teammate and sports director to Voigt, currently sports director on the Tinkoff–Saxo Bank team):
Going to a bike race with Jens is like going to a bike race with a poker player. Jens is always looking at his hand and seeing what he can do with it, for himself and for his team. Sometimes he might launch an attack and go for the win. Sometimes he might attack just for a couple of strategic bonus seconds. Sometimes he might attack to go after the best-climber jersey or some other smaller prize. Or, perhaps, he would start driving the pace after more than 180 kilometers of racing, simply to split up the field and set up one of his teammates. Regardless of the prize, he’s always trying to make the most of what he’s got, for himself as well as the team, always trying to make the most out of every situation with the cards he is holding at the time.
But the one thing you can count on is that, whenever he goes, whatever the prize, however big or small, Jens is going to make a full-on, 100-percent-committed effort. He’s not always the easiest rider to direct because, well, he’s constantly forcing you to improvise with him. Sometimes, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure where he’s going with a move. Sometimes he makes a move that appears to be nothing less than suicidal. But Jens is always thinking on the bike. He has real tactical sense that often gets overlooked. And sometimes he can almost will something to happen with pure and utter commitment.
I was in the car directing the day he won that amazing stage in the Tour of Colorado in 2012, and I’ll be the first to admit I really did not see an early solo move working. He did, though, and he proved it. But there were many other, smaller moves that demonstrate how he was always thinking, always calculating.
Take the first stage in his final Tour de France in 2014. He gets in a three-man breakaway on the first stage, a flat stage, knowing full well that there is very little chance that the breakaway will stay away with all the sprint teams eager to have a field sprint. So then he looks at his hand to see what his other options are, and he focuses on the best-climber jersey. After losing the sprint on top of the first climb, though, he understands that he is not the best climber. So he has to come up with another tactic. Suddenly, he launches a big attack, drops the others, and picks up the bonus points on the next two climbs to get the polka-dot jersey. He knew that he would only keep the jersey for a day, most likely, but it didn’t matter. He was just making the most out of the cards that he was holding at the time.
I think it’s safe to say that a large part of my reputation was built around my seemingly insatiable appetite for going into long breakaways. Just by the law of averages, the chance of a breakaway staying away until the finish is always slim, and more times than not, going in an early break is nothing short of a suicide move. Because of the low odds, a lot of cyclists never even try for the early moves. But if everyone thought like that, the sport would just be so boring. And on a personal level, I would have won a lot fewer races.
So I learned early on that the breakaway offered me a unique opportunity to exploit some of my strengths and would often represent my best opportunities for personal success. In addition, you generally put your teammates in a good position when you’re in a breakaway, because as long as someone on your team is up the road in a breakaway, everyone else on the team can pretty much sit back. They can say, “Hey, we’ve got somebody in the front group, so we don’t have to work or chase here!” It’s a win-win situation, really, and it brought me some of my most memorable wins.
Without a doubt, one of my greatest moments came in the 2006 Tour de France when I won the stage to Montélimar. It was my last victory in the Tour de France and remains a highlight to this day. Stage 13 was the longest stage of the Tour that year, stretching 230 kilometers from Béziers to Montélimar. As the winner, I covered the distance in 5:24:36 at an average speed of 42.573 kilometers an hour. But those are just the pure facts, and the race was actually a lot more interesting than that because, well, it changed the shape of the entire race. We actually finished the day with a 30-minute gap on the peloton, one of the largest winning margins in recent history, and it allowed Spaniard Oscar Pereiro to take over the yellow jersey.
But what a hard stage it was! Actually, the whole Tour had been hard. Just waking up was hard. I remember my roommate Bobby Julich just saying one morning, “Oh man, every morning, you lie in bed more dead than alive because every day you went over your limits. Sometimes you just look like a beached whale, lying on your bed totally passed out!”
And the morning of that stage was no exception. I was the last to wake up, the last to go down for breakfast, the last to finish packing, and needless to say, the last to get on the team bus. Once in the bus, we had the team meeting. The director asked, “Who wants to go for the breakaway today?” And, suddenly, all eyes were on me.
Needless to say, I was riding right next to the red car of Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme as we cruised through the neutral zone toward the official start. And needless to say, I was one of the first riders to attack.
But everyone knew that this was a perfect day for a breakaway, and for many, it would be a last chance, as we were soon entering the Alps for the final week of hard racing. As a result, there were a lot of attacks, and it took a long time for the breakaway to get away. Actually, I almost missed the move!
At one point, I saw four riders getting away. I could sense that the peloton was giving up and slowing down and realized this was a make-or-break moment. I had to act immediately to have even a little chance to catch the four riders. We must have had a little tailwind, because I remember I was in my biggest gear, a 53 x 11, until I caught them about two or three kilometers later. I was still at the peak of my career, so failing or not catching them never really crossed my mind. But once I reached the back wheel of the last rider, I was hurting all over my body. I was hurting so bad, I COULD FEEL THE LACTIC ACID IN MY EARLOBES! I swear, I could not speak right. All I could do was make some gestures to say that I could not possibly pull through, not for a few minutes at least.
And when I had a chance to check out who exactly my breakaway companions were, I just thought to myself, “Okay, for sure the pack won’t catch us, but this is going to be a difficult stage to win here.”
Four really strong riders were in the group: Oscar Pereiro from Spain, Manuel Quinziato from Italy, Andriy Grivko from Ukraine, and Sylvain Chavanel from France, whom I feared the most. We worked well together, and soon enough, we understood that we were gone for good, and that one of us would be the winner of the day.
In many ways, our breakaway was the classic breakaway. It consisted of three parts: the full-gas start to get away, a long midsection where you just ride along the countryside working together, and the final part where our little brotherhood falls apart as individuals start attacking.
The midsection can sometimes be boring. But there are also funny moments. I remember on this day, as the gap was increasing, I kept telling Pereiro that we were going to ride him into the yellow jersey. He was the best-placed rider in the group. And as the gap increased from 10 minutes to 20 minutes to 30 minutes, so did his chances. Oscar didn’t say much. He just responded with a grin.
Grivko was the first to attack, but he was quickly swallowed up and dropped. As predicted, Sylvain Chavanel was really attacking us hard, but then finally, with about five kilometers to go, I managed to get clear with Pereiro on my wheel. I pulled as long as possible, until I felt it was safe to swoop off and let Oscar pull as well.
Going into the sprint, I tried to remember some very basic golden rules when it comes to sprinting. The first is, close off one side. Why? Because that way you only have to turn your head in one direction to watch you
r opponent, as the barriers on one side serve to block any surprise moves from that side. So I rode as close to barriers as I dared, nearly touching the clapping hands of the spectators. That only left the windy side open for Oscar to attack. Since I had more trust in my raw power rather than pure speed at the end of a long stage, I slowed down and delayed the sprint until almost 75 meters from the line. And then I just went full force, accelerating toward the finish.
Now, often, people think the first position is the weaker position in a two-up sprint, but the rider in the first position dictates the rhythm. He decides what happens, so I often prefer to lead out the sprint. Plus, as stupid as it might sound, I always thought that, since the rider on my wheel is already behind me, he is already a bike length behind. The way I look at it, I just have to stay in front.
My plan worked out, and Oscar could not get up the speed to pass me before we crossed the line. Still, though, I didn’t raise my arms until after the line. That is one thing I just never do, and I would simply kill myself for losing a race by celebrating too early.
It was a long, very hot day in the saddle, and the peloton was also paralyzed by the heat and the yellow jersey. Floyd Landis, who was wearing the yellow jersey at that time, refused to make his team work until it was too late. In the end, we gained 29:57 minutes over the peloton, enough to give Oscar the yellow jersey. Everybody expected Oscar to lose it soon after, but he went on to win that Tour. And I was there when we wrote tour history.
People sometimes ask me about that day, if we made some sort of deal. But by looking at the TV images, you can see we were just going full gas to the line. Early in the stage, I jokingly said, “Okay, if we arrive together, I’ll take the stage, and Oscar, you take the yellow jersey.” But once we went clear in the last couple of kilometers, we still didn’t know if we really had enough time to put Oscar in yellow. After all, he was nearly 30 minutes behind the yellow jersey at the start of the stage. As a result, both of us really wanted the stage win. There was no deal or serious talk between us. Anyway, I was never a big fan of deals. I never sold a race, and I never bought a race. I did give away some races for good reasons—like the one stage in the Tour of Italy that I already mentioned—but never for money. That was somehow never attractive to me.
But I must say, that day worked out perfectly for both of us, and until this day, every time I see Oscar, we just look at each other and smile. We became friends after suffering together for more than five-and-a-half hours in the heat in France that day. And it was a great day for both of us.
In 2010, I had one of those rare moments when, in the middle of the race, I could look into a crystal ball and see the future. It came in the 2010 Tour of Catalonia. Stage 4 finished on this circuit that we covered a couple of times before the finish. A breakaway had gotten away earlier in the day and was still dangling off the front as we came onto this climb, the Alt de la Josa del Cadí. It was on this wide road into a big headwind, and you could see the breakaway about a minute up the road. I was riding next to Christian Vande Velde and Levi Leipheimer, and I said, “Hey, guys, in a perfect world, I will attack at exactly this spot next lap, bridge up to the break, then ride with them for a bit to recover before dropping them all at the finish.” They both just sort of looked at me and laughed.
But that’s pretty much what I did. A lap later, I just went full gas. As in my vision, I caught up with the front group and worked with them for a while before dropping them. Over the summit, I really attacked the downhill along with Rein Taaramäe from Estonia, who managed to catch up to me. At the foot of the descent, we made a 90-degree turn and all of a sudden had a huge tailwind.
Suddenly, we were just going warp-speed, and no one was going to catch us. And I eventually got a very satisfying victory. Afterward I remember my team leader, Frank Schleck, coming up to me and saying, “Wow, I didn’t think that move would work for a split second! That was just stupid, absurd, and yet totally unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it. Straight uphill into the wind! How do you do that? You make it look so easy! Nobody thought you were going anywhere! I know you’re strong and you’re not stupid, but I wouldn’t have bet a cent on that move to work!”
But you see, that’s my trick. For 18 years, people always thought I was stupid and never believed in me, never thought my moves would last. You would have thought they might have figured it out at some point, but fortunately for me, they never did. There were always enough doubters to give me a chance.
Sometimes I got into a breakaway despite myself. Sometimes I didn’t really want to be there, but I guess I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes I just followed a move, and all of a sudden, I realized I was in the break again. I don’t know if it’s luck or instinct, but I got in a lot more breaks than I ever planned. And once you’re in a breakaway and it’s gone, well, you can’t just sit up and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, fellas. I don’t really want to be here!”
On a couple of occasions, I also got into a break without the love and support of my team directors. If you get yourself in that kind of situation, you’d better hope things work out well at the finish! Unfortunately, that is not always the case, and you pay the price for not following orders. Fair enough! But sometimes it all works out, and you go all the way and bring victory home for the team. On those days, you come off looking pretty good.
One of those days came with my win in the 2012 Tour of Colorado. That was one of the last victories in my career, but also one of my most satisfying. It was a short, mountainous stage from Aspen to Beaver Creek. It was a 155-kilometer stage, and straight out of Aspen, we attacked Independence Pass, which is one of the highest mountains we climbed the whole entire season. It’s about 3,700 meters in altitude, much higher than anything we do in Europe. It’s a killer 22-kilometer climb, and of course, attacks started immediately.
I was already way down in the overall standings, which is always good if you’re looking for a stage win, so I went with the first group that broke away after only three or four kilometers. But the group was too big. There were more than 20 riders in the group, way too many to expect any real cooperation, because there were just too many different interests with the teams represented. Some teams were trying to drive the break, while others were trying to shut it down to protect the interests of their leaders back in the pack. I could see immediately that it was never going to work, that the break would just end up in a big yelling and screaming match. And behind, the pack was really chasing.
I’d already climbed over Independence Pass. I knew there were a couple of spots where the road actually leveled out and even dipped a bit before it started climbing again. So I waited for my moment. I sat last in the group going down this little dip. I even let a little gap open so that I could really build up speed. I started my attack at the bottom of this dip, and as soon as we hit the climb again, I just catapulted past everyone, about 10 kilometers per hour faster. It would have been impossible for anyone to get on my wheel and follow, and so, before you knew it, I had a 20-second gap.
But I still had 140 kilometers to go. It didn’t really matter, though. I just knew that my best chance was to go alone. It was another one of those crystal-ball moments, where I could see everything play out before my eyes. I knew that the pack would likely let this 41-year-old go, because they wouldn’t believe I could still go the distance. But I knew that if I crossed Independence Pass with a gap of one minute to one minute and 30 seconds, the pack would never see me again.
And that was pretty much what happened. But my team director, Lars Michaelsen, wasn’t so sure. I remember that when he finally was able to pass the pack and come up behind me in the team car, he was nervous. He rolled down the window, and I could just see that he was looking for the right words to tell me that this was not a good idea. He didn’t want to say something that would make me mad, but he wanted to make it clear that he didn’t believe in this move. He was like, “Jens, you know, it’s a long way to go.”
Let’s not forget that I was still climbing
Independence Pass at over 3,000 meters of altitude. I didn’t have a lot of oxygen for a heart-to-heart conversation, if you know what I mean. “I got a plan,” I blurted out.
“Maybe you should wait for just a couple of riders, so that you have a little help?”
“No, no,” I said. “I just need a minute over the top! Trust me. I feel good!”
Lars is an old teammate of mine. We raced together. We did some survival camps together. And yet he’s younger than me. So Lars probably just said to himself, “Who am I to tell Jens what to do?”
From that point, he followed me and was really behind me 100 percent. I had a good one-minute, 30-second gap over the top and really attacked the downhill section. Behind, the race was all splintered up. I knew I just had to stay out front long enough until the pack regrouped. At that point, I knew that the leader’s team would just settle into a pace and let me go, because I was so far down in the overall ranking. I knew that, once again, they would say, “Poof! Jens is 20 minutes down. He is no threat.”
It took me forever to build up a two-minute lead, but once the peloton caught the remainder of the early breakaway, things got easier. I also got a boost once we hit the feed zone midway through the race, because I just blasted through it. I didn’t slow down to get a musette bag of food or anything, as just about everyone in the pack did. As a result, I gained another 20 to 30 seconds.