by Jens Voigt
Now there were times when it got pretty lonely out there. After all, 140 kilometers is a long way to go all by yourself. That’s pretty much a four-hour solo breakaway, a long haul for just about anybody. But I was pushing and suffering too much to get bored.
Plus, believe it or not, there are a lot of things to keep in mind when you’re in a long breakaway. You always have to remember to eat and drink regularly. I always try to stretch my back a little on the downhills just to loosen up a bit. But mostly, you just have to remain focused on the task at hand, which is maintaining your lead.
In moments like those, you only have your team director driving the support car behind you for company, and you really count on him. Lars was great. Once he saw that I was committed, he was, too. He kept driving up next to me to give me my time split, an energy gel, or a water bottle, and basically to encourage me. “Hey, you’re looking good! You’ve got a two-minute gap now. You’ve got a three-minute gap now!” All those little details from a director really help keep you focused in a breakaway situation.
And then, at one point, Mother Nature helped out, because it started raining. I thought instantly, “This is good for me!” As I’ve learned over the years, anything sticky is good for me. I knew that back in the pack, the race would slow down as everybody dropped back to their team cars for a rain jacket and other gear. I just had on a short-sleeve jersey, but I knew I was working hard enough that my body would stay warm. I just said to myself, “I’M NOT SLOWING DOWN FOR ANY RAINDROPS HERE!” And I gained another minute on the pack, lengthening the gap to four minutes. With about 40 kilometers to go, the pack realized they weren’t going to catch me and just eased up. I finished the stage with nearly a six-minute gap. Not bad for an old-timer!
Lars was just ecstatic. “That was so impressive,” he said afterward. “But what was even more impressive was how daring you were to leave 20 riders behind so early in the race and just go it alone for 145 kilometers. Wow! Next time you can do whatever you want to do!”
We had a good laugh at that!
Cruising through Stage 7 during the 2013 Tour de France. (James Startt)
NEW HORIZONS
“Hey, you can only say ‘Shut up, legs’ to a point before your legs finally don’t listen.”
After the 2012 season, I felt rejuvenated. The chaos of the season and the merger of Leopard and Radio Shack were behind us, and considering my results and my overall performance that year, I was confident that I still had at least another year in me. Trek also made it clear that they really wanted me to be a part of the team again. And like I said, as long as I was physically able to compete, retirement was simply not an option.
I still had concrete goals, too, like seeing Andy Schleck ride into Paris in yellow. After all, he’d finished second barely two years earlier. But things had gotten complicated for him in between, and I would realize this year that winning the Tour with Andy wasn’t going to happen.
Problems started for Andy in 2012, when he had a bad crash in the time trial of the Dauphiné Critérium, a key warm-up race to the Tour de France. The Dauphiné is organized in the Alps and around the Rhone River Valley in French Provence. It’s a beautiful region, but it often boasts high and powerful winds called Le Mistral. Anyway, Andy is a climber, a lightweight rider by nature. He came out of this village on a narrow road and got hit by a huge gust of wind that basically just picked him up and threw him down. The diagnosis revealed that he not only had a fractured hip but also a fractured pelvis, which proved to be very hard to heal, because whenever he would try to train, the muscles would pull on the fracture and it would open and close. It was immensely painful.
He missed the 2012 Tour and struggled to get back into shape. In what can only be considered a miracle, he came back and managed to finish 18th in the 2013 Tour. He started showing real signs of returning to form, but in hindsight, I think he made a mistake after the Tour. He should have gone straight into the Tour of Spain in September, because doing back-to-back stage races like that would have set him up for the next year. But he was tired after the Tour de France and didn’t line up for the Tour of Spain, and soon enough, he lost the condition he had from the Tour and never really got it back.
When I look back on the Schleck brothers, Andy was more talented, but Frank was the harder worker. I have often seen that people with so much talent face an entirely different set of challenges than most of us humans. Because of their natural-born talent, things always come very easily for them, and it’s easy for them to overlook the basic need to work hard. Some people are so talented that they can just skip training. Nobody finds out, because they’re still very good in the races. I saw this with Jan Ullrich. He was just immensely talented but not always as focused as he needed to be. Sometimes, the most talented riders have it too easy. And when younger riders start coming up and challenging them, they’re ill equipped to compete because they forget how to work hard. They forget how to accept defeat. Supertalented cyclists grow up suffering only when they’re going for a win. And so when they find themselves suffering just to hang on, it’s very hard for them to accept.
Suddenly, they can’t get away with skipping training. Suddenly, if they haven’t put in the miles over the winter, they’re not just finishing second or third, but instead suffering just to stay in the peloton. And they can’t wrap their heads around it.
That, my friends, is a luxury I have never known. I always had to work enormously hard just to make the cut. And I’m sure that helped me have a long career. Since I was never a great champion, my own physical decline wasn’t as obvious as it would have been if I was a Tour de France winner. I never went from being a Tour winner or a classics winner to suddenly struggling to stay in the pack. That’s a huge gap, and it must be incredibly humbling.
Often for the supertalented riders, cycling is more difficult on a mental level than it is on a physical one. These riders never needed to consider a plan B or a plan C before, because they had never experienced real difficulty or crisis. And when they’re faced with having to do a month or two of hard training to get into shape, rather than, say, two weeks, they crack mentally.
But even though I went into the 2013 season quite motivated, I could sense that the end was nearing. For one thing, the numbers just weren’t on my side. And I knew that at the age of 42, I couldn’t keep pushing back the hands of time. I couldn’t keep defying age, and I knew that age would one day defy me. It was getting harder for me to make the breakaways. It was getting harder for me to make the moves I wanted to make and needed to make to be a useful part of the team. Hey, you can only say “Shut up, legs” to a point before your legs finally don’t listen.
But, mostly, it was getting harder for me to stay motivated to train. My kids needed me at home more. Adriana, Kim, and Maya—my youngest girls—in particular, needed more help with their homework and all.
For the first time in my life, cycling became a job. For the first time, I was having trouble staying motivated for all the long hours alone on the bike that are required to remain competitive. Before, cycling had been pure fun, but now, part of it became a burden. The balance between the joy of riding and the suffering and sacrifice it requires shifted. I could feel it was the beginning of the end. It sounds dramatic, but that’s exactly what I felt.
I still managed to have a good season in 2013, for what it’s worth. It took me a long time to get in shape, but I won a great stage in the Tour of California and had a good Tour de France. Boy, that stage to Avila Beach in California may have been my last road victory, but it goes down as one of my most memorable. Still to this day, “Bling” (that’s what we call Michael Matthews on Orica-GreenEdge) comes up to me and says, “Man, we still don’t know how you pulled that off!”
And to be honest, I’m not sure, either. I was in a 25-rider group with no fewer than four Orica riders; three BMC riders, including my friends Thor Hushovd and Tejay van Garderen; plus Garmin had two or three riders. There was a lot of talent in that group. But I surprise
d them all, attacking on this little rise about 3.5 kilometers from the finish. I timed it just right and came by everybody just fast enough to catch them off guard.
But I was paying a higher and higher price for my efforts. For the first time in my life, I was falling asleep on the team bus after a race. And in the 2013 Tour de France, for the first time, I realized that I wasn’t really dealing well with the stress of racing anymore. Risking your life on every downhill and constantly fighting for position are just a part of bike racing, but my tolerance for them was dwindling.
For much of the season, I was convinced that 2013 would be my last. But then I was good at the end of the season, and things were going really well with my team. We had great team spirit once again, and I was enjoying being a part of it. In addition, Trek was taking over as title sponsor, and they were very supportive of me. In August, I sat down with my team manager, Luca Guercilena, and he asked me, “Jens, should I reserve a spot for you on the team, or perhaps instead a director’s position?” I thought about it for a second and said, “Luca, I think I still want to do one more year! I just don’t feel like I should be in the car already next year. I still need to be a bike rider another year. I still need to suffer more before I can be happy with the decision to stop.” So after discussing things with them, I decided to sign on for one more year. One final fling, as they say.
I also had a conference call with my mind, my body, my legs, and myself. And, basically, we came to an agreement. My body promised me that it could keep it together for one more year as long as I promised to release it from all the stress, suffering, and responsibility at the end of the year, because it was just going to fall apart after that. And I had to respect my body because, well, I surely didn’t want it to fall apart in some big and beautiful bike race the following year with a million TV viewers around the world watching and realizing that I had raced one season too many!
But let me tell you, at the start of 2014, that’s exactly what I was thinking. I was really regretting my decision to continue and really felt that I was in over my head, that I had signed up for that one infamous season too many. I remember calling Bobby Julich early in the year and saying, “Look, man, I think I did it. I think I’m doing one year too many. I’m not sure if I still have it. Heck, I don’t even know if I want to have it anymore!” I was really struggling!
In the Tour of California, a race I had always done very well in, I wasn’t even good enough to make the break most days. And on the final day, when I did actually make the break, I just wasn’t good enough. I was in a break with Niki Terpstra, and at one point, he turned to me and said, “Come on, Jens, if we just go a little harder, we can make this work!”
I said, “Niki, I can’t!”
He said “Ah, come on!”
At which point I blurted back, “Niki, you know me. I’m not tricking you. If I could go harder, I’d go harder. But I can’t!” That was a very frustrating moment for me. Suddenly, I couldn’t force a break to happen when I wanted to. I couldn’t be Jens Voigt anymore.
This played out as much at home training as it did on the bike while racing.
Some days at home, I’d wake the kids up and get them ready for school. I’d make breakfast, get their teeth brushed, their hair straight, you know, the works. And then I would do the shuttle-to-school thing between the different schools.
But it wasn’t until I got back home around 8:30 that the problem started. I’d sit there knowing I should just have another quick coffee and get on my bike like I’d done for 18 years. But, instead, I started finding a hundred reasons why I couldn’t go ride right away. And the list of excuses just got longer and longer. You know, really important things. Maybe I should change a lightbulb. Maybe I should check my e-mail. Maybe I should fix this or that in the garage. After all, something surely needed fixing! No, the list continued on and on until one moment, I took stock of the situation and said, “Wait, Jens, you just don’t wanna go out anymore. You don’t like this enough anymore to make the daily sacrifices required!”
That’s the moment when I knew that I’d reached the end of my career as a professional cyclist.
All those feelings, all the self-doubt, gave me the perspective needed to finally call an end to my career.
The Tour of California was a real wake-up call. I didn’t want to finish my career like that! I knew then that something had to change. I knew that for the first time in my life, I wasn’t working hard enough. So I went home and started working. I started getting out first thing in the morning again. By 9:30 at the latest, I was out the door. Screw the lightbulbs! They could be fixed later! I started focusing more on intervals and intensity in my training, the stuff that really hurts. I finally started getting in shape again.
A couple of weeks later, I went to the Dauphiné Critérium in France and was able to get into the breaks and make the moves. I knew then that I was good enough to ride one more Tour de France and tie the record of 17 Tours with Stuart O’Grady and George Hincapie, which only weeks before had seemed unimaginable.
In some ways, I actually had a better Tour than in 2013. I was recovering better. I wasn’t falling asleep on the team bus like the year before. But, again, I realized that I no longer could tolerate the stress of the racing. And this was never more true than on the descents. I was good on the descents up to about 60 km/hr, not very fast, really. Between 60 and 80 km/ hr, I was really out of my comfort zone. And anything over 80 km/ hr, I was just like, “I don’t want to be doing this anymore!” The idea of flying downhill with only a thin Lycra jersey and a helmet as protection just lost all its appeal to me! It was mentally very draining. It became obvious to me that this was going to be my last Tour.
Of course, there always comes that moment just after the race where you’re feeling really good, that moment when you say to yourself, “Hey, that was pretty cool. I could do another one.” And I did think for a moment that I could do one more and get the all-time record of 18 Tours. That moment lasted for about 30 seconds.
But while a lot of people talk about the Tour de France participation record, I was never really motivated by it. Hey, you don’t get any flowers or special jerseys for participating in the Tour! It’s true that it’s a fitting honor for a rider who built his reputation on reliability to tie the record, but it was just not an honor that made me dream. I was always honored to be selected by my team to ride the Tour. That’s always a big honor. But I was never motivated by the record. It’s funny, because a lot of journalists wrote about it, and a lot of fans congratulated me for it. But for me, getting the record was more of a by-product than the achievement of a goal. Heck, I only learned about it when I started closing in on the record and people started asking me about it. The idea of breaking the record and going for 18 Tours was never a realistic option in my mind.
I had one more goal left before I retired, something that spoke to me much more than the Tour de France record. I was already preparing for the world hour record.
PREPARING FOR THE HOUR RECORD
“Look at the old Jensie! He’s always good for a surprise! Who would have seen that coming?”
Jens as seen by Stéphane Gicquel (Voigt’s physical therapist on Saxo Bank, Leopard Trek, Radio Shack, and Trek Factory Racing):
When Jens announced that he was going to attempt the hour record, he asked me to be there with him. I was originally scheduled to cover the Canadian Grand Prix races, but agreed instantly. Since 2009, I had been Jens’s principal physical therapist, and I was honored because, well, only a handful of people get to work on such a project. And with Jens, I knew it would be a great moment, and I spent the weeks building up to the hour-record attempt with Jens at the velodrome in Switzerland.
Whenever you have a rider on the massage table, you have plenty of time to talk, and while preparing for the hour record, there was even more time. There was a sort of countdown as the record attempt approached, nine days until the record, eight days until the record. . . . But even though Jens knew that his ca
reer was inching ever closer to a close, the general tone of conversation was not one of nostalgia, but rather of satisfaction. Jens was satisfied knowing that he had won just about every race he was capable of winning. And he should have been satisfied. What young professional today would not be happy with a career as rich as Jens’s?
But mostly, he was happy to finish his career on a high note. How many riders actually finish out their careers with a victory? Not many. But the world hour record is much more than a victory. Jens finished his career with a masterpiece!
Sometimes frustration leads to success. That was definitely true of my situation in 2014, my last season as a professional. I was taking a real beating for much of the early season, as I was desperately trying to get into shape so I could finish my career with some dignity. The all-time low came at the Tour of California in May. I love that race and have always performed well in it, but in 2014, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t strong enough to be where I wanted to be to make the moves. I was simply not good enough! The last thing I wanted after a 17-and-a-half-year career was for people to think I was just easing up and cruising in my last six months. I didn’t want to slowly become invisible. No, I wanted to be competitive up until my last day on the bike.
I wanted to go out with my head up. More than that, I wanted to go out in style, in a memorable way. I wanted to find a unique way to entertain the fans one last time. Toward the end of the Tour of California, the International Cycling Union (UCI) sent out a press release modifying the rules for the world hour record, one of the sport’s true landmarks. True to its name, the hour record measures the total distance a cyclist can cover on an indoor track in 1 hour. It is perhaps the ultimate test of a rider’s endurance and his threshold for pain.