Even by the standards of a sport that requires enormous stamina and capacity for suffering, Jens Voigt is in a class of his own.
Beloved by cycling fans for his madcap one-man breakaways as much as his sense of humour and quotable catchphrases, Jens Voigt is one of the most popular personalities in cycling. Yet, despite arguably spending more time at the front of the Tour de France than any other rider, he has only worn the yellow jersey twice as his efforts have always been in the service of others.
Jens was born near Hamburg and became a cyclist through the East German system before the Wall came down. He got into the national team via a four-year stint in the East German army, before signing for his first professional team.
Jens embodies the best cycling’s qualities – loyalty to his team, sacrifice and devotion to the sport. In Shut Up Legs! he tells his own story for the first time, as well as taking a funny and insightful look at the tough realities of professional cycling, in his trademark inimitable style.
JENS VOIGT is a German former professional road bicycle racer for several teams, the last one being UCI ProTeam Trek Factory Racing. Voigt competed in the Tour de France a record-tying 17 times and twice wore its famed yellow jersey, though he never challenged to capture the overall title. His career achievements include winning the Critérium International 5 times and a number of one-week stage races, as well as three Tour de France stage victories. In September 2014, he set a new hour record. He lives in Berlin.
JAMES STARTT is an American photographer and writer based in Paris. The European associate of Peloton magazine, he has covered more than 25 Tours de France and published the first English history of the great race, Tour de France/Tour de Force.
I WANT TO TAKE THE CHANCE TO THANK A FEW PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN IMPORTANT IN MY LIFE.
Starting, of course, with my family—my wife, Stephanie, and my children, Marc, Julian, Adriana, Kim Helena, Maya, and Helen, and my parents, Egon and Edith Voigt. And, of course, I can’t forget my brother, Ronny, and my sister, Cornelia. Nobody can achieve anything without the strong support and love of a family, not to mention parents teaching you the right things as a child.
Cycling gave me the chance to meet some really great friends: Stuart O’Grady, Chris Boardmen, Bobby Julich, and the Schleck brothers. Thank you, guys, simply for being my friends.
Thor Hushovd and Jens Wichman, two of my oldest friends and the best men at my wedding, also hold a very special place in my life.
I would never have had such a long career without my three childhood coaches, the Eichberg brothers. One taught me to ride correctly, one taught me discipline and dedication, and one taught me how to suffer and how to go fast.
My grandma Frieda Voigt always believed in me and was my first “sponsor” when I lived as a junior in the dormitories at the sports school in Berlin, providing me with a much-needed 50 East-German Marks per month to help me get by in the big city.
My amateur coach in Berlin, Dieter Stein, was also crucial in my formative years and somehow a real father for me in Berlin.
And, of course, my four professional team directors, Heiko Salzwedel, Roger Legeay, Bjarne Riis, and Luca Guercilena, played key roles in my career, as well as being friends, mentors, and leaders.
I would also like to thank Trek Bikes for being such a cool and great partner in the last 5 years of my career, for becoming my friends, and for organizing the best-ever sendoff into retirement in cycling history with that special bike design and cycling outfit. And let’s not forget the amazing support they gave me for the hour record project.
And most important, I want to thank all my loyal fans and supporters who were standing behind me all those years, believing in me, and supporting me.
Jens Voigt
No major book can be tackled alone and Shut Up Legs! is no exception. I am greatly indebted to many of my editors at Bicycling magazine, especially Peter Flax and Bill Strickland, who promoted the online diaries with Jens that provided the groundwork for this book.
I am also indebted to Mark Weistein at Rodale Books who allowed us to take the idea into a full-book form. He, along with his team, were tremendous in the editing process.
My parents, James and Cathy Startt, have provided a bed of support and encouragement over the years, and the sense of historical perspective, so crucial to my father, has come in handy on every book project I have done.
I always hold a special place in my heart for Samuel Abt, nothing short of my mentor. His many books on cycling defined the genre, and his ever-astute eye was a godsend at different points in the making of this book.
My wife, Rebekah, and my daughter, Ella, have always provided the best reason to get off the road and come home, and Ella is already an experienced hand on the Tour de France.
I am also greatly indebted to many people who were part of Jens Voigt’s amazing journey and am grateful for their input, many of which were included in certain chapters. Thank you, Jan Schaffrath, Samuel Abt, Roger Legeay, Chris Boardman, Thor Hushovd, Sébastien Hinault, Heiko Salzwedel, Francis Bur, Stuart O’Grady, Chris Anker-Sørensen, Bobby Julich, Lars Michaelsen, and Stéphane Gicquel.
And, last, I am grateful to Jens. In my more than 25 years covering the Tour, his story stands alone. Thank you for allowing me to help tell it!
James Startt
“While the Communist system sometimes looked good on paper, unfortunately, it was run by human beings.”
“JUST DON’T SHOOT ME IN THE BACK! You can run, but whatever you do, don’t shoot me!”
That’s what my father, Egon, would tell his patrol partner every night as a young soldier in the East German army. My dad was born in 1946 and was one of the first kids born into the new East Germany, established when the country was divided at the end of World War II. And even though East Germany and West Germany were two separate states throughout most of his childhood, the borders remained open.
It was not until they started building the Wall in 1961 that people were confronted with absolute choices, and some would flee desperately to the West. This is exactly when my dad was serving his military duty. Now when we talk about the Wall, most people just think about the Berlin Wall. But that was only a small piece of it. In reality, a whole barrier system was set up all along the border with West Germany.
You see, back in the early days of Communism, back when they were still building the Wall, soldiers always went out on patrol in pairs. Part of the logic was that they were supposed to sort of patrol each other, as well. And if one of the soldiers made a break for it, to try to flee to the West, the other was expected to shoot.
And since Dassow, where my dad lived, was next to the West German border by the Baltic Sea, a lot of soldiers would try to flee. The problem with this patrol method, though, was that if a soldier was going to make a run for it, often he would shoot his partner first, so that the partner could not shoot him when he ran.
Night after night, my dad would just make it clear to his partner that he wouldn’t shoot, so there was no reason for his partner to get paranoid and shoot him first. Pretty crazy! But then those were crazy times.
My dad was like most Germans, who are themselves like most other people. And like most other people, if you give them the choice to live wherever they want, the vast majority will choose to stay right where they are. My dad was like that. He wasn’t going to run, but he didn’t want to get shot for staying in East Germany, either!
And although my childhood in East Germany is more and more a part of my past, as I have said, it still remains very much a part of me. It’s funny. When you add them up, those years amount to less than half of my life now. But they were formative years, spent in an entirely different world than what my children know today.
Like most others, I try to erase the bad memories from my past and focus instead on the positive ones. And that’s why all these years later, there still aren’t too many bad things I can say about growing up in East Germany.
Basically, I had a good, happy childhood, one with no stress. Life was just slower. It was lived on a smaller scale than life today. And it was more relaxed. Part of the reason for that was that Dassow was such a small town. I remember back in 1987, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dassow’s first receiving official “city” status. Up until then, it was officially considered just a village. I thought, “Huh? You mean this little town is officially big enough to be considered a city?” It still looked pretty small to me! Up until then, I just never saw Dassow as anything more than a village, because, well, it really is.
Growing up, I spent most of my time outside. But even then it seemed as though 20 to 30 steps in either direction would take me out of the village. That’s how small it appeared through the eyes of even a child. We had one shoe shop, one clothing shop, one flower shop, one toy store, one newsstand and stationery shop, one food shop, and one bakery. That was about it. Now part of that was simply a result of living in Communist East Germany. There was never any market competition, so we just had one shop to supply each of our basic needs. But part of it was also just Dassow.
None of that could keep me from dreaming big dreams, though. My first great dream was to become an astronaut. Flying into space was just the biggest adventure I could imagine. The dream was fueled by East German television, which documented Soviet flights and the adventures of Sigmund Jähn, an East German, who became the first German to enter outer space when he joined the Soviet Intercosmos mission in 1976. Jähn was such a hero, I imagine most East German kids at the time wanted to be astronauts.
Soon, however, I decided that space might not be my thing and I would be better off as a forestry engineer, because I loved the great outdoors so much. That dream lasted until I entered a special sports high school in Berlin, where I quickly realized that it would be hard to spend my life in the forest if I was going to become a world-class athlete.
Once I got into the high school system, I thought journalism might be the best career path. I’d always loved reading, and if you can believe it, I was even in the poetry club for a while. I also enjoyed writing, so the idea of working for one of the news agencies was appealing to me. But once the Wall came down, everything changed.
Before the Wall came down, life was just so much simpler and more relaxed. The Communist system did its best to eliminate competition. There was no stress about careers, no stress about outperforming somebody else. For the average person, there wasn’t a big difference in status among different professions. You have to remember that in East Germany, an engineer, a doctor, or a factory worker like my dad pretty much all made the same salary. Egon worked as a metallurgist for a company making farm equipment, and my mom, Edith, was one of the town’s photographers.
Egon was the big one in the family. He is tall like me and as strong as an ox. But he was quiet, too, quite unlike me! As a kid, he was a pretty good soccer player, but he never really had the chance to pursue sports because of his responsibilities on the family farm. And once he was older, most of his strength was put to good use working in the factory.
To be honest, I didn’t see all that much of my dad when I was growing up, because he generally left for work before I got up in the morning. He would come home at 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. Sometimes we did homework with him, but I came to realize that when he came home from work most days, he was just exhausted.
I saw more of my mom. Edith was able to arrange her work so that she pretty much only worked half days. That way she could tend to us three kids. She would get up with us in the morning, fix us breakfast, and then go off to work. After school, we would often meet her at the photo studio and start doing our homework while she finished up.
Then we would all go home together.
My parents didn’t have big, important jobs, but they only made, say, 100 marks (about 50 US dollars) less per month than a doctor did. And it wasn’t a competitive thing, either, because everybody knew they weren’t going to get rich anytime soon. This acceptance led to far less jealousy among people than you see today, because, well, people had a lot less to be jealous of. As a result, I do think that people were friendlier to each other back then. They just had a lot more time to spend in their gardens talking to their friends, having a barbecue, or kicking a ball around.
Also, although it might be hard to imagine today, consumerism basically didn’t exist back in East Germany. For starters, our choices of brands and products were very limited. Motorbikes were all MZ. Televisions were Strassfurth. Cameras were all Praktica. It was the same for just about everything: radios, bread, sugar, you name it.
There were only two types of cars: a big one and a small one! The Trabant was the small car and Wartburg was the big car, so people weren’t obsessed with the make, model, or size of their cars.
And like just about everything else except food, cars were really hard to get in East Germany. They were so hard to get that, believe it or not, the standard procedure was that when a child was born, his or her parents would register the baby for a car! That way, when the child was 16 or 17, it would be their turn on the waiting list and they would get one.
My parents were regular working-class people with three kids: my older brother, Ronny; me; and my sister, Cornelia. We never had much money, and we didn’t get our first car until I was about 15. But that said, we had what we needed.
In some ways, growing up in Dassow was different from growing up in most other parts of the country, because our village was located on the border of East Germany and West Germany. As a result, we were more aware of the differences between the two cultures than most other East Germans were. Heck, if we turned our antennas in the right direction, we could even get West German radio and television! But we had to be careful that the police didn’t see which way the antennas pointed, or there could be a knock on the door!
Nevertheless, we had few regrets about living in East Germany. My dad had made a life for himself in Dassow. That’s where he came from. That’s where he met Edith. That’s where he had his children. That’s where he had a job. He never had a reason to be unhappy. Really, when I think back on my parents, they were always very grounded, and they kept things in perspective.
Although they never tried to flee East Germany, they didn’t embrace the Communist system, either, and refused to become members of the party. There were consequences for such decisions! It definitely cost my father certain jobs, and I can tell you that it didn’t look good on my application to sports school later on, either. But Egon always said, “Jens, shortcuts in life just give you short-term advantages. Be true to who you are.”
My father also understood that if he ever did cross the border, he would be a nobody. He would have to start over again, and it was not a given that his life would be better, that he was going to make big money or anything. Plenty of people were actually worse off after crossing.
I remember how, when the Wall came down, people were saying, “Well, now we have the freedom, but we don’t have the money to express that freedom!” And they were right. Sure, in theory, they had the freedom to suddenly pick up and go to Hawaii, but they didn’t necessarily have the money to buy the plane tickets!
So once the Wall came down, all of us East Germans quickly realized that there was potential for life to be better, but not for everybody. There was a lot more stress, and we had a lot more responsibility for ourselves. We had to work hard.
In East Germany, you really didn’t have to work hard at all. It was just a no-go that you could get fired. There was no unemployment in East Germany. Can you imagine that today? Even if you were lazy or just plain stupid, the state would create a job for you. That was definitely one of the advantages of the Communist system.
But while the Communist system sometimes looked good on paper, unfortunately, it was run by human beings. And so, inevitably, it just went to shit! That’s the way it is with us people. The idea was that everybody would work as hard as he could for the common good. You know, just out of their own good conscience and goodwill, everyone would strive to be better. The stronger would unite to pull the weaker up. It’s a beautiful idea in theory, but it just didn’t turn out that way.
And, of course, life wasn’t all good. It was filled with propaganda and surveillance, and the state really controlled individual lives. Officially, it was illegal to listen to West German radio stations or watch movies from the West, although we did have access to certain authorized films, books, or music. Now my parents were pretty relaxed about it and would let us watch the movies coming directly from the West. But we had to promise not to talk about it in school the next day. Like I said, if those radio and television antennas were pointed in the wrong direction—toward the West—the police would show up at your door. Often, we just had to point the antennas to the eastern side, even though we knew that western reception would not be as good, because if your antenna was pointed east, it was impossible to get good reception from the west.
It was pretty scary, really. Heck, I remember one day, maybe 10 years after the Wall came down, my dad was listening to Radio Hamburg and working in the garage. All of a sudden, a police car drove by, and my dad just jumped! It was pure reflex. “Oh my God!” he said. “Can you believe that after all these years I’m still afraid to listen to the wrong radio station?” Can you imagine how much fear had been burned into his brain? How strong the control and the fear were? “I have to laugh at myself,” he said. “But I’m just shocked at how deeply it’s still inside me!”
On days when we had state elections, the police would show up at our door if we didn’t vote before noon. I remember my grandma, Frieda. She was a bit of a rebel. And she would just forget about the elections. She was strong, just tough as nails, and she was always working on the farm. She would be busy feeding her chickens or something, and the police would come and take her to vote! Frieda also had three sisters living in West Germany, and although she was pressured to cut the ties, she always refused and continued to correspond with them even though that, too, was not looked upon well. Mail did circulate between the two countries, and we always got letters or Christmas boxes from our relatives in West Germany, although I’m sure they were opened and read by some customs officer prior to delivery.
But my grandma told it like it was. I remember in school they taught us that after the Wall went up, all the farmers just donated all their equipment to the collective. But Frieda told us otherwise. “Oh no,” she said. “They [the state] just came at three in the morning and took it all away! They didn’t ask us anything. They just came and took everything away!”
You know, it took me until I was 22 to understand that Hitler and Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact and split up Poland during World War II. That’s not what we learned in school! In East Germany, they taught us that Hitler attacked Poland and the good, wise Stalin went into the eastern side of Poland to save as many Polish people as he could from the hands of the Nazis. What they didn’t tell us was that when the Nazi and Russian troops finally came together in central Poland, they held victory parades together and basically chopped the country in two and shared the spoils of their success. No, they didn’t teach us that in school!
It wasn’t until well after the Wall came down, until my own kids were actually in school themselves, that I learned things were quite different. I remember going to the library, reading up on what really happened in World War II, and just being astonished. They lied to a whole generation!
One thing I have learned from all this, however, is that the winners write the history books. That’s the way it is in life. That’s the way it is in cycling, for that matter. And when I was growing up in East Germany, the winner was Communism!
So, obviously, not everything was great in East Germany. And looking back, I think in some ways I was quite lucky, because I had some sympathetic teachers. The fact that my parents weren’t card-carrying members of the Communist Party and we had family in West Germany didn’t win me any favors in the state sports school. And already, as a young kid, little “Jensie” would also say whatever came into his head and speak his mind.
But, fortunately, my homeroom teacher, Dieter Richnow, took a liking to me and was aware that the truth was not exactly what was being taught in school. I would say, “Ah no! My grandma says that the state just came and took away the tools!” Of course, he couldn’t officially agree with me and in class had to say things like, “Ah no, the state would never do something like that!” But he didn’t report me or anything. If he had, they could have just sent me home! Game over!
But like I said, what I remember most about life in East Germany was how relaxed it was at the time. At least when it came to stress levels, the old system was pretty successful, because, well, there was a lot less stress. And that had a lasting impact on how I later viewed my financial situation as a professional.
Maybe I could have become richer, for example, by being more tenacious or by changing teams more often. But I’ve always been happy with where I’ve been, and as a professional cyclist, I’ve basically been happy with the amount of money I’ve been making at any given time. Sure, I probably missed some opportunities to make more money. But those opportunities generally bring with them more stress, which I’ve always tried to avoid.
And that comes back to my upbringing, because when it comes to money, I have always been of the mind that if I’m making enough, why do I need more? It’s like, how many beds do you need to sleep in? Why would I need a house with 15 bedrooms?
Materialism really only came to me later in life when I had kids, because having six kids in a city such as Berlin forced me to be more aware of money. The cost of living for six children has a way of imposing financial concerns on you. So the days when I could just float along were long over. Yet even with the pressures of supporting a family, I’ve always tried to keep finances in perspective. I wanted to make decent money, sure, but not at the expense of time with my family.
“I owe it all to the pigs!”
Jens as seen by Jan Schaffrath (schoolmate of Voigt’s, former professional cyclist, Etixx–Quick-Step team director):
I’ve known Jens since he was eight or nine years old. We were born on the same exact day, the same exact year, so in some ways, we were like brothers when we were growing up in East Germany. We both started out in long-distance running, and at a very young age, we would be fighting it out for victory in cross-country races. And then a couple of years later, we ran into each other at the sports school and became really good friends.
At first, sports school was really hard for him. He came from the country and was all alone in Berlin, and he really missed his parents. Me, I lived in Berlin, so I went home at the end of the day, unlike Jens, who lived in the dormitory. So my family kind of took him in, especially that first year, and he often would come home with me.
That first year, he really struggled just to keep his spot at the school. It was really competitive, and sometimes fights would break out. I just kept encouraging him, because I knew that he was stronger than most of the guys there, and sure enough, at the end of the year, Jens made the cut, while some of the others were sent home. He just wanted it more!
When I see him today, I often think back on the years when we were growing up. And the one thing that never changed with Jens was his desire to win. It didn’t matter if it was cross-country, soccer, or cycling—he always wanted to win! I’ll never forget that. At the sports school, we played a lot of soccer in the winter. And Jens always played to win. He was far from the best player on a technical level, but he was just running nonstop all over the field, trying to make a play. He just wouldn’t give up. It didn’t matter if we were four goals behind. Jens did not know how to give up. Defeat just was not part of his vocabulary. And it still isn’t today!
LIKE JUST ABOUT EVERY GERMAN BOY, I PLAYED SOCCER FIRST. But I lacked hand-eye coordination, which is kind of important in that sport. And I certainly wasn’t good enough to dribble around defenders and score goals, which is pretty much all boys want to do when they first start out. If I wanted to be easy on myself, I would say I was just hopeless! But being awful at soccer did have one hidden benefit. It helped steer me toward endurance sports, which, as you know, I was pretty good at!
Not that I knew it at the time, of course. No, at nine years old, all that I, or anybody close to me, knew was that without soccer, I had way too much time on my hands. And way too much energy to burn!
I, of course, thought I was being funny and creative when, for example, I tried to ride a local farmer’s sheep like a horse. I felt like John Wayne!
At the time, pirate movies and westerns were our favorite movies to watch when West German TV reception was good. But we couldn’t talk about them in school because they were strictly forbidden. Are you kidding, John Wayne and Communism? No, they simply did not mix. Standing up for yourself the way Wayne did. Taking justice into his own hands. No, that is not what East German authorities wanted to promote!
Little misadventures, such as riding the farmer’s sheep, did not amuse my teachers or my parents, and just plain got me in a lot of trouble. In the eyes of my teachers I was just too energetic. So one day, my homeroom teacher came to my parents and said, “Listen, your son has way too much energy! He has to find some sport to burn it off. He just has to!” Now, back in the day, they called me a wild child. Today they have another name for it. They would have diagnosed me with ADD in a split second, bounced me from therapy to therapy, and prescribed me drugs until I seemed normal.
In East Germany, however, there just wasn’t that kind of personalized attention. Instead, running became my medicine. Right away, I found that I was pretty good at running medium and long distances and immediately started winning local races and placing in bigger events. Without cycling, I would definitely have been a 5,000- or 10,000-meter runner.
My track-and-field career came to a premature end, however, when I failed to meet the desired objective in a long-jump test one day. My coach, convinced that I was not giving my all, punished me by making me run laps. And, with each lap, my anger just mounted and mounted, and finally I quit and never returned.
Looking back on it now, I still think I was right. I mean, how many times have you heard “Jensie” get criticized for not giving his all? I just don’t do that! That’s just not me. And that attitude was instilled very early on, because my dad hammered it into me. “Son,” he’d say, “if you’re going to do something, then do it all the way!” Egon was all about dispensing old-school wisdom, and he was about as old school as it gets. “Boys don’t cry!” That was another. And it worked on me, because since I’ve grown up, only one thing has made me cry—the birth of my children!
Soon enough, I was looking for another sport. And one day, the cycling club BSK Traktor Dassow showed up at my school, the POS Ernst Puchmüller—named inevitably after some anti-Fascist from World War II. The coach gave a little presentation about the cycling team. And even better than that, they offered these brand-new metallic silver racing bikes to everybody who would sign up the same afternoon.
And hey, if you’re an almost-10-year-old boy from a simple working-class family and somebody offers you a brand-new free bike, what can you say besides “Hell yeah, I want to sign up!”?
A free racing bike? That was so awesome! And I will never forget the brand. It was Diamant. But that’s easy to remember, because it was the only bike company we had in East Germany.
So there I was with my new Diamant. I couldn’t have been any happier. Obviously, at that age, I knew nothing about Gitane, Pinarello, or any other bike manufacturer, really. I was just happy to have my own bike to ride. After a few weeks of training, we did our first race, the state championship uphill time trial. It was held about 200 kilometers east of Dassow. And I won!
It’s funny, though, because when I think back on it today, what I remember most about it is not the race itself, but the fact that I had to wait until I got home before I could tell my parents. Why, you wonder? Well, for the simple reason that we didn’t have a phone. Of course, this was well before the age of the Internet and mobile telephones. But damn, my parents didn’t even have a landline!
In those first years, when I was 10 or 11 years old, I honestly think I won every single race I started, save maybe the national championships. I was just stronger than the other boys. I would go to the front, and nobody could follow. When I was 12, I still won, say, three-quarters of the races. Sports were fun. It was just like a game. Soon enough, I was invited to try out for one of the elite national sports schools, a huge opportunity for any kid in East Germany, because sports played a huge role in Communist society.
But then, in 1984, some strange pig disease, Maul-und-Klauenseuche, spread throughout the area, and the entire town of Dassow got quarantined! It sounds funny to talk about this today, but the pig disease actually played a huge role in my career. Suddenly, I couldn’t train. Suddenly, I lost all my fitness because of it. We couldn’t leave town, and the authorities really didn’t even want us playing sports in town. The only problem was that the pig disease came at about the same time I was taking the tests to get into the sports school. I did manage to pass the test, but I wasn’t as good as I had been. And all of a sudden, I really had to work!
So there was little “Jensie,” this 14-year-old kid going to the KJS Ernst Grube sports school in Berlin. Just about every school in East Germany was named after some martyr who died at the hand of the Nazi regime, and Ernst was one of them.
Berlin was the big city, and leaving home for the first time when I was just 14 was not easy. It was the first time I had seen buildings higher than two or three stories, and in my eyes, that was a pretty big deal. And there were a lot of changes. I was the youngest student at the boarding school. And, of course, all the older kids were telling me where my place was in the pecking order. Back in Dassow, I was one of the leaders in the school, because I was a good student, and I was good in sports. But in Berlin, I was no leader! It wasn’t easy. I was getting into fights and also getting worn down with studying and training all the time. At the same time, my body was growing.
And the result of all this was that it was a difficult time for me. All of a sudden I was just managing to get by, to pass the tests each year—to do the required times in time trialing, and so on. So I wasn’t as good as I had been, and that was hard for me to accept.
The way cycling was structured, there was no sports school in the northern region where I came from. So we had to compete with the kids from all around Berlin. And it was very competitive! After the first test, only 45 kids were left, and after the second, only about 30 kids. Then they sent us to this sort of nationwide mini-Olympics in Dresden, and only 10 to 15 kids from each region were selected to compete. They tested not only our cycling but also our general athletic strength and went so far as to do these sophisticated morphology tests to predict how our bodies would mature physically in the coming years. Those tests actually helped me, because I was a late developer. Some kids were already shaving at the age of 14. Not me! Because these tests were based on a sort of curve that took into account your current level of maturity, I was able to score points against kids who were simply more developed physically.
So I made the cut, and in 1984, I was sent off to sports school. But sports weren’t just games anymore. And suddenly, I had to work very hard just to keep up. I had to really work, really sacrifice, then go get my head kicked in. Then I had to go back to the start line and get my head kicked in again. It was tough, but the experience taught me a lot about sacrifice and suffering, two things that have come in handy throughout my career.
I often think that the sports school was my own school for suffering. As I said, I had to struggle just to survive, so I think that over all these years, I learned to set my pain threshold higher than other people’s. After doing just that for 15 or 20 years, well, I think I have a pain threshold that is 10 to 20 percent higher than most others. I don’t know if you can scientifically prove it, but I totally believe it. It makes sense to me. That’s the way I feel. By just repeating the level of suffering, the body goes, “Okay, I know how this feels. Now go farther.”
You also see the world differently when you’re down. When you’re down a little bit, there are always people who will kick you. But other people will reach out to you and say, “Hey, let me give you a helping hand. I can help you out of this.” And in moments like that, you discover who is true, who is false, who is a friend, and who is just a wannabe friend.
One of my best friends at the time was Jan Schaffrath. He was my age. But he was a superhero of the sports school. Ah, he was just so good. Unbelievable! He could time trial. He won road races. He won on the track. He was superfast and could beat professionals such as Olaf Ludwig or Erik Zabel while he was still an amateur. He was just a huge talent. And he was my friend! He was a good friend to have, because he really stuck up for me when it came to bullying. And as a result, I often worked for him. We have remained friends for life. After racing for Team Telekom and Milram, he has gone on to be a successful team director. He’s a great rider and a great guy!
Was it a hard period? Yes! Geez, I was just 14 years old when I started. I was missing home and at the same time seeing some of my friends go home and quit. We lost the first kid after just a month. And another went home for Christmas and didn’t come back.
It was just a very hard time for me. For the first 14 years of my life, I had lived pretty much a pressure-free existence. And all of a sudden, I was surrounded by pressure. Sports school was all about making the grade, about being good enough, something I’d never once questioned before.
In addition, I had grown up in a very harmonious family. I wasn’t used to being all alone. And because I was spending so much time training, my grades suffered. But I kept telling myself, “No, no, you can’t go home!” My parents loved me and always said I could come home. But I also knew that they were proud of me and where I was going. They never put pressure on me, but I really didn’t want to let them down. The result was that already at the age of 14 or 15, I was confronted with my first make-or-break moment.
To be honest, there were definitely some points when I thought about throwing in the towel. But, fortunately, I had some good friends who were there for me, and I learned a lot about myself and really grew as a person. And it wasn’t like I could just pick up and go home, either. My parents didn’t have a car at the time—they were still waiting to receive their first one—and they lived 300 kilometers away. So it wasn’t like I could go home crying whenever I wanted. No, I just had me!
Things started to improve after that first year, but in those first years in the sports school, I learned that you need a team to succeed . . . that you can’t always be the strongest, and that sports, like life, are about taking and giving. Now this happened to coincide perfectly with everything they were teaching us in school about the kollektiv, the collective, which was about taking and giving so that the stronger help the weaker. Nobody was saying, “If you’re going to have a career, then you’ve got to use your elbows.” That sort of mentality just didn’t exist!
The old sports school system also taught me how to deal with pressure, because like I said, it was always there. We were always being tested. And being selected was no pleasure cruise. All it meant was that I was going to be tested again and again. In the beginning, nearly 150 kids entered the program from all around the country, but by the time they got done with the elimination process, only about 15 riders qualified. So you really had no choice but to get used to working under pressure.
Yet while the East German system was very much based on working for the common good, the bike taught me the need to also fend for myself. Individualism, of course, was not part of the East German mentality, but something strange happened to me on a bike that made me question such ideas, because when I was in my third year of sports school, I won my first road race. Ironically, it was a race in which I was the only member of my team present. How crazy is that? That was a huge event for me, and it made me question a lot about myself and what I had been taught. I’d won some time trials previously, but this was a road race. I realized in that race that there were no safety nets. There was no one else to save the situation but myself. There was no coach telling me what to do, what to eat, when to attack. It was at that race that I first understood that once I took things into my own hands, I was a lot better than I thought. I’ll never forget that race. The weather was shitty all day, and in the final, there were only about 25 guys left. I was looking for the right moment, and finally I attacked about 3 kilometers from the finish. I just went full gas, and I won.
I was ecstatic, of course, but it was bizarre, too, because I did it alone. It was strange. Were my teammates just bringing me down? That thought did enter my mind. But mostly it just gave me a lot of confidence in myself. I realized that I didn’t have to be a follower, that if I believed in myself, things could work out, too! Because I didn’t win straightaway when I arrived at KJS Ernst Grube, I’d become much more of a worker, just doing what people told me. But from then on, I raced with a lot more self-confidence.
Nothing came easy in sports school, but the lessons I learned there served me well once I turned professional. I often say, in fact, that I had the best of both worlds.
Sports, of course, were superimportant in East Germany, and the school system worked closely with the sports system to find and develop talent. It was a very, very expansive system, and in many ways very successful. Obviously, we’ve learned, looking back, that it was a deeply flawed system, rife with doping. That said, we have learned in recent years that the other side was not much better, as doping among the West German teams has been widely reported. In retrospect, the Olympics were really nothing more than a clash of the titans.
Nevertheless, the East German system was very successful in its ability to identify and develop talent from a young age. And that aspect of the sports system has remained in place in Germany even today, long after the collapse of Communism.
“I want to open a bookstore where I am my own best customer.”
FOR MOST KIDS GROWING UP, BOOKS, MUSIC, AND MOVIES PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER. I was no exception, even though the East German government censored everything that we read, listened to, or watched.
Nina Hagen was the enfant terrible of the German scene. She was so wild that the East Germans were actually happy to let her out to go to the West. She was just so different, so crazy, that people knew about her even without the social media outlets of today. To be honest, I wasn’t too into her music, but we sure talked about it a lot.
Some Western groups even made it across the airwaves to us. Duran Duran was just huge, and Madonna and Cyndi Lauper were getting big despite the censorship. That said, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” never did get played on East German radio!
For me, though, the big band I remember was Karat, as in “14-karat gold.” They had a song called “Seven Bridges.” It was about someone who was in prison for seven years, and each year he would cross another bridge toward freedom. I guess you could say it was a sort of metaphor for life under Communist rule; I’m not sure. And I’m also not quite sure how it passed censorship, to be honest. But it was a very popular song.
From a very young age, however, reading became a central part of my life, a great pastime as I got more and more involved in sports. It provided a perfect counterbalance.
Like pretty much everyone, I learned to read at the age of 6 or 7, and it just opened an entirely new world to me. I could get absorbed in books and spend hours with them alone in my room.
I loved adventure books by authors such as James Fenimore Cooper. I just loved stories such as The Last of the Mohicans. I loved learning about the Indians. And Cooper’s books were authorized by the East German authorities because the Indians’ struggle against the white man was seen as a sort of struggle against capitalism, and of course, the Communist regime liked anybody who was against capitalism!
And then there was Jack London, probably my all-time favorite writer. He, too, was authorized in East Germany because he was an early supporter of Socialism. And he has at least three books on my all-time favorites list. White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and Klondike Tales are right up there with Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Peeling the Onion by Günter Grass. As I got older, I also read more challenging books, such as The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. But I never forgot those adventure novels I read as a kid.