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Career advancement: Ciolek scores U-23 road win
Young German goes from auto worker to world U23 champ in 12 months
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Life is good for Gerald Ciolek.
A year ago he was working 10 hours a day as an 18-year-old apprentice electrician at the Ford auto factory in Cologne, Germany. Today he is the world under-23 road race champion with a big, two-year contract on T-Mobile in his pocket. He won the title on Saturday afternoon by easily out-sprinting a six-man break that formed halfway through the final 22km lap in the eight-lap, 177.2km race in Salzburg, Austria.
When Ciolek was clocking in at 6 a.m. to his Ford Motor Company job last year, he would train for bike racing in the evening. He was on a low-budget domestic team called Akud-Arnolds Sicherheit when he entered the German national pro road race championship at Mannheim. Shockingly, Ciolek won that race in a 30-man field sprint by out-gunning veteran UCI ProTour riders Robert Forster of Gerolsteiner and Erik Zabel of T-Mobile. He remains the youngest-ever national professional champion in cycling history.
The day after that famous 2005 victory Ciolek said, “I want to make a living as a cyclist eventually, but I would like to finish my vocational training first.” The lanky teenager obviously had the right attitude to life and didn’t seem to be affected by the publicity that soon surrounded him.
Indeed, he didn’t accept a first offer from T-Mobile. Ciolek’s Akud-Arnolds team director Raphael Schweda, who helped form the Akud team after his own Coast formation collapsed in 2003, was anxious to keep Ciolek in his ranks. “If Ciolek would switch to T-Mobile now, that would not be an optimal solution,” Schweda said. “They have had so many talents that flourished only after they left the team. I think Gerald shouldn’t enter the ProTour yet. He is only 18, for God’s sake. I think two more years with a smaller team such as ours would be exactly the right thing for him.”
Well, Ciolek has progressed faster than anyone expected. This year, riding for Schweda’s Wiesenhof-Akud team, the young talent has performed brilliantly in German pro races: He was second at his hometown Rund um den Henninger Turm classic in May behind Italian star Stefano Garzelli; won stage 3 of the Tour of Germany ahead of Zabel; took fifth in the ProTour Hamburg classic; and then, two weeks ago, won the Old Town Nuremberg race.
At 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds, Ciolek is not a big, beefy field sprinter, which he proved in Saturday’s world under-23 championship. “We knew that the selection would come down to the last two laps,” said Ciolek. “My team worked very well for me and that allowed me to sit in the background … and wait for the right moment.”
That moment came 11km from the finish, just as the bunch regrouped after the latest of a series of breakaways. Just where the infamous Tiefenbach hill rears up at 15 percent, a violent attack came from a 20-year-old Russian, Alexander Khatuntsev.
“I expected the final attack to be on the hardest part of the climb and I tried to be in front,” said Ciolek. “It worked.”
Indeed, Ciolek followed a chase started by Italy’s Francesco Gavazzi and the Netherlands’ Robert Gesink. Their five-man chase group was completed by Frenchman Romain Feilleu and Belgian Jelle Vanendert. It seemed for a while that Khatuntsev was going to ride away with the championship, but Gesink and Ciolek led a strong chase on the winding descent to catch the Russian as they entered the Salzburg suburbs 5km from home.
The now six-man break never had more than 15 seconds on the peloton but that was enough. “It came down to a sprint,” said the remarkably strong Khatuntsev. “With 300 meters [to go] I was in the leading position but I didn’t know any of the opponents. So I just went as hard as I could.”
Ciolek expressed similar thoughts about the sprint. “It was rather difficult for me,” said the young German. “I knew that I was very fast in the sprint but I really didn’t know what to expect from the others.”
With about 150 meters left, Ciolek charged past the Russian on the left, while the 22-year-old French rider, Feilleu, challenged on the right. “The sprint was a little too hard for me,” Feilleu said. “I tried to focus on the German, but I had some cramps and I wasn’t able to overtake him.”
In fact, when Ciolek put his head down it was if he had put his foot on the gas of one of the cars he was helping to build so recently. At the line he was five lengths clear, with time to sit up and celebrate, while Feilleu and Khatuntsev hung on for the lesser medals.
Aggression throughout
The race opened with an audacious solo attack the first time up the Tiefenbach climb by Russia’s Olympic track champion Mikhail Ignatiev. He gained 1:38 by the end of lap 2, and was finally caught after 55km alone by a group of 10, which included Gesink and Australia’s Simon Clarke.
The peloton regrouped on lap 4 before another dangerous looking move was made on the steep Tiefenbach climb by Gesink, with eventual silver medalist Feilleu and Italy’s Dario Cataldo. This trio gained a maximum of 1:10 before the pack closed in the fifth time up the main hill.
The race was all together starting lap 6, when Denmark’s Kristoffer Nielsen jumped away on the flats with Frenchman Florian Morizot. They were joined on the circuit’s first climb, with 60km to go, by Swiss rider Thomas Frei and a jet-propelled Dominique Cornu, Belgium’s world time trial gold medalist, who set off alone on the first part of the steep descent to Tiefenbach.
Nielsen chased and caught Cornu, while Slovenia’s Simon Spilak bridged on the 15-percent pitch from a small chasing group. The day’s main breakaway was underway when eight chasers moved clear on the climb and made it 11 riders in the lead heading into lap 7 with a gap of 48 seconds.
With 11 men from 11 different teams, the front group look to have a chance, but it was too many were sitting on so the break soon split up. When the road went uphill again, with 38km to go, Cornu accelerated strongly, drawing out Spilak again, along with Sebastian Langeveld of the Netherlands, Davide Malacarne of Italy and Miguel Rubiano of Colombia.
Nielsen bridged up on the Tiefenbach climb with Rene Mandri of Estonia. Belarus rider Branislau Samoilau then shot out of the peloton, passed all the chasers and made it eight in the lead with one lap to go. But the gap was only 30 seconds, and the peloton was still about 100 strong as the break was brought to heel with 18km to go.
More attacks came in the following 6km but none was successful until Khatuntsev went clear the final time up the Tiefenbach hill.
Americans solid
The best placed of the three Americans in the race was 21-year-old John Devine from Dixon, Illinois, who is in only his second year of road racing after a successful career in mountain biking. “Every lap I was up there and then I just sagged on the climb maybe to 70th, 80th” Devine said. “But obviously I didn’t do that on the last lap, and went over the hill in about 15th.”
By the finish, Devine was in a 60-strong group, which also contained his teammate Thomas Peterson and the Canadians Cameron Evans and Christian Meier, five seconds behind the winning break. Devine was 11th in the field sprint to take 18th overall, while Peterson was 41st, and the two Canadians 47th and 48th.
“We’re not gonna work and blow ourselves trying to get in a break, and maybe not be in the finish,” said Devine, who will still qualify for the U23 team next year. “I think we accomplished all our goals. Everyone rode well, and everyone rode their own race.”
His better-known teammate Craig Lewis, from Greenville, South Carolina, finished 35 seconds back in the same 20-man group as Canadian David Veilleux. “It’s been a long year for me,” said Lewis, “so the focus and motivation’s a little down. I wish I could be more motivated for this race, but I’m happy to be here and happy to do a world championships. It’s pretty cool.”
For Ciolek, who was 20 this week, life itself is pretty cool. How far he can go in the sport when he joins T-Mobile next year only time will tell.
Top 20
1. Gerald Ciolek (G) 4:00:50
2. Romain Feillu (F) same time
3. Alexander Khatuntsev (RUS) s.t.
4. Francesco Gavazzi (I) s.t.
5. Jelle Vanendert (B) s.t.
6. Robert Gesink (Nl) s.t.
7. Jos Van Emden (Nl), at 0:04
8. Sergey Kolesnikov (Rus), at 0:05
9. Edvald Boasson Hagen (N) s.t.
10. Danilo Wyss (Swi) s.t.
11. Mark Cavendish (GB) s.t.
12. Andres Buividas(Ltu) s.t.
13. Anatoliy Pakhtusov (Ukr) s.t.
14. Yukiya Asahiro (Jp) s.t.
15. Diego Milan Jimenez (Sp) s.t.
16. Michal Golas (Pol) s.t.
17. Grega Bole (Slo) s.t.
18. John Devine (USA) s.t.
19. Jure Kocjan (Slo) s.t.
20. Dymitro Grabovskyy (Ukr) s.t.
