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Andreas Klier: A classics man whose time has come
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It was 1997; Andreas Klier was 21 years old and had just signed his first contract as a pro. One of his first races was Het Volk, the Belgian season opener, and the blond Bavarian from Munich was excited as all hell.
This is what he had been dreaming of, ever since he had started racing bikes as a kid in his club in the Bavarian capital. He had never admired the Tour de France riders much – panting up the Alps in the July sun did not seem all that appealing. Spring classics, on the other hand, sparked his imagination: the tough conditions, the cobblestones, the fanatical Flemish supporters. Andreas Klier’s role models were Roger de Vlaeminck, Walter Godefroot and Johan Museeuw – not stage racers like Greg LeMond or Miguel Indurain.
So here was his chance. It was everything he expected it to be – there was snow and sleet and slippery cobblestones but Klier battled his way to the finish line. But his teammates and the director of his GSII team Nürnburger didn’t much appreciate the effort. Although Klier finished 12th – an impressive performance for a neo-pro – the rest of the team was grumpy. No one else on the team had finished the race and the new guy had kept them waiting.
That day Klier knew he had to change something. Luckily his effort at Het Volk had been noticed by the Dutch team TVM-Farm Frites and they offered him a contract for the following season. The pay was lousy but TVM, with Tour of Flanders champion Peter van Petegem and Gent-Wevelgem winner Geert van Bondt, was a classics team, and Klier did not hesitate for a second. At the end of his first season he threw his stuff into a van, drove to Belgium, rented a rathole of an apartment in Denderhoutem, five miles from the finish line of the Tour of Flanders, and started training.
Seven years later, Klier still lives in Belgium. He has bought a house in Denderwindeke, not far from Denderhoutem, where he lives with his wife, Kerstin – who followed him from Munich – and their 1-year-old son Lasse. And Klier has made his dream come true – he is now one of the best classics riders in the professional peloton. After his victory at Gent-Wevelgem in 2003 and his second place in the Tour of Flanders last weekend, his status among Belgian fans has almost reached the level of some of his former idols.
With success, Klier has proven his own philosophy right, that to be a classics rider you have to live and breathe the cycling culture of the rough European north. While colleagues, such as Steffen Wesemann, go to Australia or Arizona to train in winter, Klier stays in Belgium, just like the other pros in his training group, men like Van Petegem, Van Bondt, Servais Knaven or three-time world cyclo-cross champion Mario De Clercq. Their preparation starts in November and they ride the roads of the big races – the Tour of Flanders, the Grand Prix Harelbeke, the Brabandse Pijl, the Scheldeprijs and all the other Belgian races – every day. No matter if it rains or snows or freezes. According to Klier, that is only way to acquire the necessary toughness for the classics.
These training outings are no joyrides – the Belgian countryside is poor, and in winter it’s barren, gray and depressing. And the rides get harder from week to week as the racing season approaches.
“We never just roll around," Klier says. Classics, especially the Tour of Flanders, are won by being able to suffer more than the others on the short and mean climbs. “You have to be able to drop everybody on those climbs. Then you relax, let them catch up and on the next one you drop them again. When you’ve done that five or six times, you’ve worn them out.”
So that is what Klier, Van Petegem and the others practice – all winter long. Approach the climbs with full speed and push yourself across the top with all you have – over and over and over again.
Besides this old-fashioned but highly effective preparation, Klier loves being part of Belgian cycling culture. Even in his native Germany not many people know much about the classics or care for anything other than Jan Ullrich and the Tour de France.
“In Flanders," Klier says, “every old lady in the supermarket knows all the winners of the Tour of Flanders of the past 30 years.”
What Klier finds particularly appealing about living in Flanders is the proximity to the fans. Traditionally in Flanders the riders or Renners as they are called, have fan clubs of their own, based in bars in their hometowns. The bars are called “supporter cafes,” and before cyclists earned six- or seven-figure salaries the supporters would literally support the riders, collecting money to keep their horses in the race.
Even though the world of cycling has changed, this structure still thrives in Belgium. Not even a rider like Van Petegem can afford to snub his fans – every now and then he shows up in his café and drinks a few rounds with his supporters. After his first Tour of Flanders victory in 1999 Van Petegem, Klier and the others spent all night drinking in Van Petegem's Café in Brakel and went on a tipsy victory lap on the course with the fans in the early hours of the morning. These days, Klier has his own supporter café.
It took the blond German with the sunny smile and the friendly attitude a few years to acquire this status as a hero of Flemish cycling. He had to work his way up as a helper for Van Petegem first and then for Zabel and Wesemann at T-Mobile. He had to gain the experience and the maturity that it takes to be a great classics rider over the years: “To win Paris-Roubaix once”, Franco Ballerini famously said, “you have to lose 10 times first.”
Klier has done his share of losing, and at the beginning of this year, at age 29, he thought his time had come. He visited Walter Godefroot in the bike shop in Gent that the director of T-Mobile owns, and asked him for a leading role for this year’s spring.
Godefroot agreed, and in Flanders, Klier proved ready for his new status. Even after Steffen Wesemann dropped out of the race with stomach problems, Klier and Zabel controlled the race together from the front.
Indeed, Klier came as close as ever to fulfilling his career goal of crossing the finish line in Ninove first, conceding only to the new Belgian hero Tom Boonen.
“The pressure of having a responsible role was good for me," Klier said after the race, confirming that he is not the type to avoid hardship. The pressure of the leadership role especially helped Klier over the final kilometers when he made a comeback to second place after being dropped on the Bosberg and “feeling completely dead,” as he said.
In Wevelgem on Wednesday, Klier and Zabel will seek revenge for the defeat on Sunday, before both try to help Wesemann win Paris-Roubaix. It will be both the climax and the end of Klier’s season. Of course he will race through the summer, probably tackling the Vuelta and the world championship, but this will be mostly to stay in shape.
The real work doesn’t begin again until November, when it gets foggy and damp and cold in Flanders. That’s when the classics champions come to life, steaming up the Berendries and the Bosberg and the Muur of Geraardsbergen every day, testing each other and themselves, learning who can suffer most.
