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Erik Zabel: T-Mobile's durable Deutscher delivers
It had been a long hot day in the Auvergne region of central France. 237km in six hours – the longest stage of the 2004 Tour - and the July sun had baked the roads mercilessly. But the climate and the physical strains of the day were not the only reason why Erik Zabel was steaming. Clearly his temper had passed the boiling point: Having torn off his sweaty jersey, Zabel stood shirtless next to the team bus in a side street of the medieval town of Saint-Flour, screaming furiously at team director Mario Kummer until veins popped out of his neck.
Only 10 feet away Andreas Klöden was calmly giving television interviews, but the reporters had a hard time focusing on his words. Much more interesting than Klöden’s commentary on his second place of the day behind Richard Virenque was what was going on behind him. Zabel had come in third behind Klöden and gained valuable points toward the green jersey. But obviously the seasoned sprinter thought his team should have given him the opportunity to earn a few points more.
But Klöden had wanted to make a point, a point that he made more explicit in October after re-signing with T-Mobile. “A team that wants to challenge Lance Armstrong,” Klöden repeated on various occasions, “needs one captain and eight helpers.” Not one captain, seven helpers and a sprinter. And to emphasize that T-Mobile was about the GC and not the green jersey, Klöden had sprinted for the bonus seconds in St. Flour instead of leaving the points to Zabel.
Even though Klöden’s outspokenness adds a new dimension to it, the debate about his status in the team is not new to Zabel. “I am the only one in the team who never subordinated his career to that of Jan Ullrich,” he says. “I was always independent of Jan.” And maybe this independence is what is most vexing to some of his teammates, especially for Klöden. When re-signing with T-Mobile, the Tour runner-up had to concede that Ullrich, still the most popular German cyclist, will remain the team’s leader.
Zabel, on the other hand, has the standing within the team to demand a spot on the Tour roster for his own sake. “It doesn’t make sense for me to go to the Tour unless I can win a stage or compete for the green jersey,” Zabel says. And as of now, Walter Godefroot, Mario Kummer and the prospective new team director, Olaf Ludwig, seem to be ignoring Klöden’s complaints and have listed Zabel as one of the 14 candidates for the Tour.
“Thank God we are not a democratic debating club, where everyone can give his opinion, but a professional organization with a hierarchy,” said Zabel, in reference to Klöden’s remarks.
The fact that Lance Armstrong has announced he will race in the Tour 2005, for Zabel, is an argument for putting him on the team, not against it: “If Armstrong races, all teams should be prepared for the same outcome as in the past six years, no matter what they try to do,” Zabel said in an interview with the German cycling magazine TOUR. If he is correct, the potential for stage victories and a green-jersey win by Zabel is as attractive or perhaps more so for T-Mobile than yet another overall second place – whether by Klöden or by Ullrich.
Zabel, like many people in Germany, has become weary and skeptical of Ullrich’s announcements, made annually since 1997, that he will repeat his victory in the Tour. Zabel has had to step in more than once when Ullrich found himself unable to keep his promise. He was always a guarantor for success at T-Mobile, insurance against the uncertainties of a fickle Ullrich.
In 1999, 2002 and 2003, the years that Ullrich was injured, out of commission for other reasons, or racing for a different team, the burden was always on Zabel. And he nearly always delivered: In 1999 he won the green jersey; in 2002, he battled for it spectacularly until the very last day. In 2003, Zabel rode a bad Tour, suffering from early crashes, but came back to win the sprinter’s jersey at the Vuelta as well as the fall classic Paris-Tours.
Fans in Germany honor Zabel’s reliability – even in 2004, he was voted cyclist of the year over Ullrich and Klöden. No matter what Ullrich does or doesn’t do, Zabel is there to please them. His role as the reliable backup for Ullrich gives him a degree of confidence as well as leverage within the team.
“I’m the one with the least to lose in this situation,” he says about the coming Tour. “If I don’t go to the Tour there is much more pressure for the others to win. There won’t be a scapegoat for them to blame it on, if it doesn’t work out.” Ullrich himself seems to understand this better than anyone – in 2004, it was Ullrich himself who supported Zabel’s nomination for the Tour de France squad.
At age 35, Zabel’s reliability is truly astonishing. Many times he has been described as being past his prime, unable to keep up with the new generation of sprinters. But every year so far he has proven his critics wrong – in 2004 he lost Milan-San Remo to Oscar Freire only because he celebrated his victory over Petacchi a second too soon. At the world championships he came in a close second to Freire again.
“I am very sure that I have not gotten any weaker in the past years,” Zabel says. “We have been recording our data at Telekom for a long time.”
However, Zabel thinks that the level of sprinting in pro cycling is becoming higher every year.
“A few years ago, my 1200-watt maximum in a sprint was still enough to win,” he noted. “Now, you probably need 1300.”
But Zabel has been able to keep up. No one sees his 14th place at Milan-San Remo this spring as a sign that he is fading. Zabel had broken his foot falling down stairs in his home in Unna, Westfalia, in December and had suffered from the flu in January on top of it.
T-Mobile management certainly remains confident in Zabel. With Andreas Klier unable to start Sunday’s Paris-Roubaix following a crash in Ghent-Wevelgem, where Zabel finished ninth, the durable German speedster will share leadership responsibilities with Steffen Wesseman. And the team is offering Zabel a generous two-year contract extension this May.
“I would like to get the negotiations over with without a lot of noise and complications,” Zabel says. “I would like to stay where I am, if I have the choice.”
Klöden’s little rebellion is not able to shake his determination to remain with the team that he helped build when Ullrich was still racing as an espoir. Zabel has seen many things happen at T-Mobile: Riis coming and going; Ullrich coming, going, and coming back. Zabel never let any of it deter him from pursuing his own goals and racing at the highest level.
Zabel possesses what one could call a certain stubbornness. More positively put, he holds his ground firmly – a talent that educators did not fail to notice when Zabel was a little boy in East Berlin. Upon testing his athletic abilities, they decided he was best fit to become a wrestler. It was a career that Zabel only gave up because he coveted the fancy gear the cyclists had at the central sports school of the German Democratic Republic.
Being a fighter is clearly in Zabel’s genes and it certainly helped him in his sprinting career. What came harder to him, he says today, is learning to lose.
“I knew how to win well ever since I first started racing. I didn’t learn how to lose well until 1999,” Zabel said, referencing the Tour, when he won the green jersey after four second places and not a single stage victory. Throughout the entire 1999 season, Zabel finished second 21 times.
By 2004 he had definitely learned his lesson. In San Remo, after losing to Freire, he says, “life went on a meter behind the finish line.”
Zabel has accepted defeat and misfortune as part of athletic life. And he is prepared for it, if it comes in the power struggle within T-Mobile.
“If the call comes that I’m not going to the Tour, it wouldn’t be easy to handle. But I would manage,” he says.
After all, Zabel has accomplished everything he can at the Tour, winning the green jersey six times and taking 11 stages. Ullrich and Klöden are the ones who have something to prove in France.
Sebastian Moll's profile of Erik Zabel is part of a larger feature in the current print edition of VeloNews that focuses on Team T-Mobile as it begins the 2005 season. - Editor
