Heading into what will be his sixteenth professional season at 40 years of age, Jens Voigt will literally be twice as old as some of the youngest riders in the peloton. The ageing warrior still packs a punch, though, and plans to keep tearing it up at the head of the bunch, legs pumping and shoulders rocking, once again in 2012.
He’s at an age when most of his peers have either quit the bike or are barely going through the motions for another paycheque but, for Voigt, three things keep him going in the sport. The first is his unmistakable energy in cycling and indeed everything he does – he’s famously hyperactive, which is just as well as he has six children – while the second is his ongoing passion for the sport, the kick he still gets out of racing his bike.
The third factor is a major team goal he wants to see achieved before he hangs up his wheels.
Voigt was on the victorious CSC-Saxo Bank team in 2008, riding into Paris with Carlos Sastre behind him, but that hasn’t blunted what he most wants to achieve while he’s still in the sport. “I still have this dream to bring one of the Schlecks in yellow to Paris,” he said, speaking to VeloNation by phone from his home in Germany. “I know I am 40 and there are a lot of good riders on the team, so it is not given that I will do the Tour de France… But still, I won’t give my place up for free...”
Voigt is correct in his suggestion that there will be a big battle for places on the team next year. Some of the top riders from the RadioShack team have moved across to Leopard Trek, which will compete as RadioShack Nissan in 2012.
The line-up will likely include the two Schleck brothers, but Andreas Klöden and Chris Horner will also be there, two competitors who have finished third and tenth respectively in the past. That gives the team four riders who could in theory battle for yellow. Add multiple world time trial champion and Classic victor Fabian Cancellara and you are down to four remaining slots between all the other riders. It makes the jostling for places on the team all the more demanding.
Voigt understands that, but he’s still hungry. Even though he’s not quite as strong as he was at his peak, he’s clear on what he brings to the team. He knows his place and knows what he offers; he’ll play to his strengths, work hard to hit strong form, and hope that’s enough to get the nod.
“As I said in an interview with German Pro Cycling…if they look for a young, talented guy with a diamond earring and stuff, that is not me…if they are looking for a climber, that is not me. But if you are looking for a real hard worker who is loyal and indestructible…hey! – then it’s me…” he said, speaking in an animated, entertaining fashion which makes plain how much he wants to be there.
“You cannot come to the Tour de France with eight or nine captains…you also have to have some people who are ready and willing to just put their head down and ride until they fall off the bike. Sometimes that is all you need.
“I mean, you don’t need ten climbers to win the Tour, you need a little bit of everything. Maybe some people laugh at me, saying ‘ha ha, look at him, he thinks he has a chance.’ Well, maybe I don’t have the biggest chance…but it is still my dream.”
In some ways, next year’s parcours could make it all the more important for the team to have a rider like Voigt. The route is stacked against the Schleck brothers, with just three summit finishes being counter-balanced by almost 100 kilometres shared out between the prologue and two time trials.
The Schlecks will need to make up time where they can and, if they are to win the Tour, will have to be firmly in yellow in the final week and have strong support in defending the race lead.
Voigt is clear about this. “I think they can win, but that is just my pure, personal view,” he said. “When they are standing in the startline in Liège, we have got to consider ourselves at minus three minutes to Cadel and maybe minus four minutes to Contador. We have got to have that in mind, and we have got to make up that time.
“Or, the other way around, to be perfectly safe and easy and calm, we need to have one of the Schlecks three minutes ahead in yellow the evening before the last time trial. That’s what we need to make it safe…it might be enough with one minute, but that is not safe. To be really sure, three minutes time gap to number two the day before the last TT…that would be the safest option.”
In other words, the brothers need to attack like never before, jettisoning some of the caution they have shown in the past, and go eyeballs out to build a buffer on the climbs which suit them. There’s no room for any hesitation. “I think we have to be more brave, more spectacular,” says Voigt with certainty, thinking ahead to the hot summer days of July, and the battle for an elusive yellow jersey.
The day the leopard was swallowed up:
Voigt speaks now about how the RadioShack Nissan team will try to win the Tour de France, but a couple of months ago he would have laughed at the suggestion that he would be riding in team kit bearing those logos next year. Professional cycling is an extremely unpredictable sport at times, though, and at the beginning of September, escalating rumours of a semi-merger between the American RadioShack squad and Voigt’s Leopard-Trek team were suddenly confirmed.
The news was unexpected to many fans, but nobody was more surprised than the riders themselves. As Voigt tells it, he and his team-mates had literally no idea that the transformation of the team would take place. He’s diplomatic about it now, but it’s easy to read between the lines and picture how confused, uncertain – and, in some cases, angry – the riders and staff were.
“Teams change more or less every year. Something changes in most teams. Riders change or retire or neo pros come in…but this merger was a big thing, a big step,” he admits.
“The communication was a little bit confusing for all of us, I guess. I had friends asking me, ‘hey, Jens, what’s going on there?’ I said, ‘look, honestly, I don’t know much more than you, as I also only read it in the press, the same moment as you do…’ It came as a little bit of a surprise at the start. We just started this team a few months ago, then six or seven month later we go together with another.”
The developments saw several key people leave both teams, as well as the individual who did a huge amount in setting up the Leopard Trek outfit at short notice. In August, Brian Nygaard had been working as general manager of the team and was planning towards 2012; in September, the Dane was shown the door and left trying to secure something else for next season. He’ll act as press officer for the new GreenEdge team, but it’s hard to imagine him being anything less than furious with what happened and how it played out.
Voigt was also faced with uncertainty, but on September 9th it was confirmed that he would indeed continue as part of the squad in 2012.
Now, two months later, he’s able to rationalise what happened and accept the transformation.
“I was surprised by it, but now that we have had our first team meeting, it was explained to us why it happened and why it was done exactly in that way,” he says. “You understand a little bit more because you have got more information. So it starts to make more sense now.
“One point I would really like to emphasise is that we actually did get everybody a job…even though some are not with us any more, they still have a job. I am sure we saved all the riders and apart from two people from the staff, everybody has a job and is safe.
“That is an important point for me. I spent years with some of these people, I already worked with them in CSC with Bjarne Riis, so I would not like to see that they are left behind. I feel a lot better that we didn’t leave anyone behind, that we put an effort in to save everybody. That makes me feel a lot better about the whole new project. It is a much better start [than it could have been].”
Unfortunately for the team, though, things aren’t quite as simple as that. Two months after the merger was announced, a big question mark hangs over the squad and its plans for 2012. Voigt's not certain what it's all about, but he has his own thoughts on the matter. [Read more in Part II here]