Auf Wiedersehen, Team T-Mobile

Giants no more

T-Mobile bicycles ready for the 2006 Tour
Morzine, France

From today's Cyclingnews.com

Cycling News Flash for November 28, 2007

Edited by Sue George

Deutsche Telekom pulls sponsorship, but the team will continue

By Susan Westemeyer

Team T-mobile as presented at the beginning of the 2007 season Photo ©: Photosport International

Deutsche Telekom AG has stopped its sponsorship of T-Mobile Team, effective immediately, it announced Tuesday afternoon. However, High Road Sports Inc., the team management company, said that "its elite men's and women's cycling teams will continue racing in 2008 after T-Mobile has ended its engagement. The teams will now be known as 'Team High Road'."

Telekom had sponsored the team, under the names Team Telekom and T-Mobile Team, since 1991. "We arrived at this decision to separate our brand from further exposure from doping in sport and cycling specifically. This was a difficult decision given our long history of support for professional cycling and the efforts of Bob Stapleton in managing the team in 2007," said Deutsche Telekom Board member and CEO of T-Mobile International Hamid Akhavan. "We have an obligation to our employees, customers and shareholders to focus our attention and resources on our core businesses."

The team had been rocked over the last two seasons by a series of doping cases. "We have worked very hard with the current team management to promote a clean cycling sport but we reached the decision to continue our efforts to rid all sports of doping by applying our resources in other directions. Deutsche Telekom AG wants to make it clear that this action is not based on any disagreement with or misconduct by team management," Akhavan emphasized.

High Road Sports, owned by Bob Stapleton, holds the team's ProTour license. "T-Mobile's decision to end its involvement in professional cycling is a challenge for the sport and our team. We will review and adapt our operations, and continue to advance our leadership position in athletic success and commitment to clean and fair sport that began during our work with T-Mobile," said Stapleton.

"We have an outstanding international roster of exciting young talent backed by proven veteran leadership for 2008," he added. "We will likely be the youngest team in the ProTour and believe that together, these athletes can shape the future of the sport with their talent and commitment."

High Road Sports will use the next few weeks in intensive preparation for the 2008 racing season. "We have good options, but plenty of work to do to begin racing in less than 60 days," noted Stapleton. The team is focused on beginning its 2008 campaign with the first Race, the Tour Down Under in Australia in January.

The team's sponsorship contract was set to run until December 31, 2010.

(All rights reserved/Copyright Future Publishing (Overseas) Limited 2007)

Enthusiastic Fans at the 2006 Tour

Well, this is not totally unexpected but is still a disappointment. Much more so than USPS or Discovery was Team America, Telekom/T-Mobile was surely "Germany's Team." From feeble beginnings in 1991, when Erik Zabel was pretty well the entire story for the next few years, the team became a powerhouse of Eurocycling: Tour de France victories in 1996 and 1997, wins at Milan-San Remo, Paris-Nice, Classica San Sebastian, HEW-Cyclassics, the Vuelta, Amstel Gold, Zuri-Metzgete, Tour of Flanders, Tour de Suisse, Liege-Bastogne-Liege--a long list.

Matthias Kessler

But so too is the list of riders who have admitted to doping or have been thrown out of racing because of it: Zabel, Riis, Rolf Aldag, Christian Henn, Matthias Kessler, Alexandre Vinokourov, Oscar Sevilla, Udo Bolts, and, most recently, Patrik Sinkewitz. Serhiy Honchar, who won both time trials at the 2006 Tour de France, was invited to leave the team, as was domestique Eddy Mazzoleni, for unusual blood readings and '97 Tour winner Jan Ullrich was fired before he could even start the 2006 Tour as revelations about blood-doping surfaced in a Spanish inquiry, "Operacion Puerto,"which is still having repercussions. What a list...

Serhiy Honchar

It has been argued that whether pro cyclists dope is immaterial: it is all just entertainment anyway. I don't buy this argument. Road racing is the most beautiful sport in the world and it is diminished by cheaters, who steal from other cyclists as well as the fans, and the facile argument that "they all do it" does not justify it. With all the revelations after the 2006 Tour, things were supposed to be cleaned up. Tour magazine ran an article about the new "clean" generation of Germans who were going to save the sport, riders including Stefan Schumacher, Markus Fothen, and, yes, Patrik Sinkewitz. It turns out that Sinkewitz has been doping since he was 21.

Linus Gerdemann wins Stage 7
Photo ©: Sirotti

It is the fourth rider featured in the article who might give fans hope for the future. Linus Gerdemann surprised everyone with a stage win at the Tour de France on July 14th this year. It was a wonderful effort as he gradually dropped his companions and finished the stage on the Col de la Colombière, winning not only the stage but the yellow jersey as well. It clearly took everything he had as the next day he could not keep up at all. It was the finest win at the Tour this year, in my opinion.

Auf Wiedersehen, Jan!

As pretty well all pro cycling fans have heard by now, Jan Ullrich announced his retirement recently. This was not much of a surprise; the soap opera began with his sudden eviction from the 2006 Tour de France just before it began, followed soon thereafter by the cancellation of his contract with T-Mobile. He has not raced professionally since his victory in the Tour de Suisse in June. Without either a racing license or a team, his prospects for 2007 did not look very promising, and the shadow of Operacion Puerto hangs over him still, along with other riders suspected of doping. To have what was once such a promising career end on such a subdued note is a better lesson on the weight of expectations. Perhaps the greatest natural cycling talent of his generation, Jan Ullrich's gift evaporated with accidents, poor preparation, bad management--and the problem of perhaps not having a strong enough will to compete against the most disciplined rider of any generation. I still recall when after his Tour de France victory in 1997 that commentators said he would be capable of winning six Tours. Little did we know that someone else, a cancer patient at the time, would go on to get those wins, and one better as well.

Many of my American friends have made comments about Jan Ullrich being not good enough for first place, a second-rater. This is manifestly untrue if you look at his palmares:

1993 World Amateur Road Race Championship
1996 1 stage, Tour de France
1997 Tour de France, overall
2 stages, Tour de France
1 stage, Tour of Switzerland
1998 3 stages, Tour de France
1999 Vuelta a España, overall
2 stages, Vuelta a España
World Time Trial Championship
2000 Olympic Road Race
2001 Giro dell'Emilia
World Time Trial Championship
German Championship
2004 Tour de Suisse, overall
2 stages, Tour de Suisse
2005 1 stage, Tour de Suisse
1 stage, Deutschland Tour
2006 1 stage, Giro d'Italia
Tour de Suisse, overall
1 stage, Tour de Suisse

In all, there were 65 victories and an impressive number of podium finishes at the Tour de France. In 2003, when Jan Ullrich rode for Bianchi and came closest to winning the Tour for a second time, his elapsed time was actually less than Lance Armstrong's, who won due to his USPS putting in a marvellous team time trial performance.

Jan Ullrich at the Tour de Suisse, 2003

When I lived in Germany, from 1998 to 2002, Jan Ullrich was probably the most popular athlete in the nation. People liked his mellow, relaxed style and his apparent friendliness. They forgave him his lapses in training and errors of judgment, pointing out that he was merely human--unlike that machine from Texas. The two riders had some similarities, both being raised by their mothers in a single-parent household. But Jan Ullrich was raised up in the East German sports system, which picked out talent early and demanded total obedience. Unlike Lance Armstrong who had to fight his way to the top and, in his early career as a pro racer was like an unguided missile, Jan Ullrich was guided by others. It is not clear if this reliance on others, and a lack of emphasis on self-discipline, ultimately injured his career in a brutally hard and particularly unforgiving sport.

Jan Ullrich, Author: "My Favourite Rides in the Black Forest"

Last year when I was at the Tour de France with a group of German friends everyone was pretty disconsolate over der Jan’s not riding but the level of surprise was much less than I had expected. When I doubted that we would ever see Jan ride again professionally, the whole group agreed. And this was even before T-Mobile fired him.

In 2001, a beautiful book of rides in the Black Forest was published, with great maps and hill profiles. These were Jan Ullrich's training rides in one of Germany's most scenic areas. I made a trip to Freiburg to visit friends and we decided to ride the first route in the book, "Over the Texas Pass." We rode through his town of Merdingen, where there was a big "Welcome Back, Jan!" sign to mark his return from the Tour de France and then continued through the beautiful vineyards of the Kaiserstuhl area. As we were riding I saw another cyclist coming the other way, wearing a Champion of Germany white jersey. As he came nearer, I saw the earring: it was Jan himself. It was two or three weeks after the 2001 Tour de France, where he had come second, and a week before the Championship of Zurich, where he also came second. He waved to me as he rode by and after I returned the salute I watched him ride. Like a turbine, smooth and so powerful; like nothing I had ever seen before. This is how I want to think of him.

There are those who say that all pro cyclists are dopers and cheats, and they tend to say it with a cynical enjoyment at ruining the pleasure of fans who love a great performance. Jan Ullrich obliged us with many great moments: the 1996 Tour, when he came second and looked as strong as his teammate, Bjarne Riis; the 1998 Tour, when he desperately tried to make up for his one bad day and reel in Marco Pantani; the 2003 Tour, when he crushed Armstrong in the first individual time trial and crashed out in the rain in the second.

I have a very nice yellow jersey autographed by Jan Ullrich which I was going to frame when his career was over and I could list his palmares. I think maybe it will just stay in the closet for now, next to the Johan Museeuw-signed Mapei jersey…

Of course, some fans never lost faith...