Category VII Cycling

Sunday was supposed to be Jan Ullrich and T-Mobile’s day. The Deutschland Tour was heading to the home territory of Jan Ullrich in the Black Forest, and the T-Mobile captain was expected to use the day and Monday’s time trial as the anvil of his D-Tour victory.

Rather, as has been so often the case this year for T-Mobile, the day ended up being one of frustration, failed expectations, and excuses. Not to deny that the weather in Germany for the D-Tour – and for this stage in particular – has been anything in atrocious, or certainly it is not helping Ullrich’s lingering health issues. But the D-Tour, like the entire season for the premier German team, has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster.

Granted, the short history of the D-Tour has not been dominated by the Bonn-based T-Mobile or its previous Deutsche Telekom incarnations. That distinction belongs to the German National Championships, which long had the flavor of an intra-club training race than a national competition. In fact, given that the winning rider was seemingly determined by T-Mobile’s internal politics, the flavor was much more of a post-Tour de France criterium than a legitimately contested race.

But this year one can mark the nadir of the T-Mobile nightmare at the German national championships. Six-time Tour points competion winner Erik Zabel, still smarting by his team’s decision to leave him off the Tour squad, lost the final sprint to an unheralded rider from an even less heralded third-tier squad. Adding insult to injury, team management in the immediate aftermath of the race said publicly that the result served only to confirm their decision to not take Zabel to France.

Infighting more than results on the road have characterized T-Mobile’s season, which began with Kloeden demanding the team leave Zabel off the Tour squad and replace him with someone capable of supporting Kloeden (and Ullrich? Or Vino?) in his overall ambitions in Paris. The horrific start to the season – Vino’s classy win at La Doyenne was their first victory of the season – only added to the bad atmosphere. But the tragic drama was not yet done unfolding. During the opening mountain stages in the Tour, after Vinokourov attacked Lance and got a gap, it was his own teammate Kloeden who countered and brought the race – including Lance – back up to the Kazakh.

The season stands in stark contrast to the days when Deutsche Telekom first entered professional cycling, taking over the title sponsorship of the Stuttgart team in 1991. Perhaps, though, the most significant year was 1993, when Olaf Ludwig – one of the many German legionnaires the team coaxed back to ride for the German super squad – placed second in four Tour stages, but did not manage a single win. After that result, Ludwig came to the realization he no longer could compete at the highest levels, and instead turned his efforts to bringing along the newest talent the team had signed – a young rider from Unna named Erik Zabel. Ludwig’s tutelage paid almost immediate dividends with Zabel winning two stages (including one on his birthday) in his first Tour.

Bjarne Riis’ arrival in the squad in 1996 in many ways ushered in the halcyon days. A bona fide overall Tour rider, he led the team to victory in cycling’s most important race, and perhaps more importantly for the squad, his young (German) lieutenant Jan Ullrich seemed capable of winning for himself an at-the-time inconceivable seven Tours.

And while Telekom did emerge as something of a powerhouse – particularly at the Tour and Milan-San Remo – Ullrich’s entrance also seemingly brought about the salad days’ demise. From the beginning, the young prodigy wreaked havoc on the internal dynamics of the team. Initially it was owing to squabbles between the team management and Ullrich’s junior coach (who accompanied to rider to Bonn, but had no official capacity within the team). As a result of the intense interest Ullrich generated in German cycling, a number of other German teams emerged, unfortunately, all too often with the borrowed business plan of Le Groupement. Coast was one of these, and when they lured Ullrich away from T-Mobile, Rudy Pevenage bid an acrimonious adieu to his longtime associate Wlater Goodefroot (directeur sportif at Telekom) to accompany Ullrich. (An uneasy détente between the two was effected in order to complete Ullrich’s return to the squad.)

Always conscious of the German rival teams – especially the more durable and successful Gerolsteiner – the management at Telekom found themselves pressured into making personnel decisions against their better judgment. The signing of Robert Bartko after the 2000 Syndey Olympics was one example. Despite Telekom’s view that he was a season or two away from a pro career on the road, they snapped up the track star after Ullrich’s defection to Coast. Perhaps this also led to Telekom’s summary dismissal of many of its more loyal riders after they got a bit long in the tooth. And in a bizarre and ugly incident during the Giro d’Italia this year, T-Mobile criticized eventual winner Paolo Savoldelli for ingratitude after he left following an unhappy two years with the German team.

Unsurprisingly, both Vinokourov – the most successful rider this year – and Erik Zabel – the most successful rider in the team’s history – are leaving after this season. Zabel rejected the offer to follow in Ludwig’s footsteps and ride one more year before taking a management job. Instead he and Alessandro Pettachi will head up an Italo-German team pimping milk from Bremen’s creameries.

Also leaving, however, is Walter Goodefroot. His retirement had been planned for some time, but certainly could come at no better point. Ok, well, maybe he would have preferred to have hung it up last year before the messiness of this disastrous season. Fortunately, T-Mobile has also seen fit to already try and script a storybook ending to this tale. Goodeforoot’s replacement as top dog in change of the cycling team will be Olaf Ludwig, the same man who once turned the squad around. Certainly the squad’s sponsors and its legion fans are hoping he’ll have the same touch needed to develop young talents like Matthais Kessler and Stephan Schreck – and give T-Mobile its second re-birth.