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Amgen Tour of California: New start for Rogers
Editor’s note: When America’s biggest bike race, the eight-day Amgen Tour of California, starts this weekend in San Francisco, some of the world’s leading riders will be starting their 2006 seasons at the head of major ProTour teams. In the current issue of VeloNews, you can read detailed profiles of two of these men: Discovery Channel’s George Hincapie and Team CSC’s Dave Zabriskie. Here on velonews.com, we are featuring three of the other major contenders. We began Tuesday with an in-depth interview with Phonak team leader Floyd Landis; Wednesday's's installment featured Gerolsteiner leader Levi Leipheimer; and today, we look at world time-trial champ Michael Rogers of T-Mobile.
Michael Rogers will be wearing the rainbow-hooped white jersey of world time trial champion when he rides the prologue stage at the Amgen Tour of California this Sunday. And despite winning that title three years in a row, Rogers is probably the least-known world champion in recent history. His lack of recognition, though, shouldn’t last much longer.
The rangy 25-year-old from the Australian capital territory of Canberra made a big stride in his emergence this winter by signing a contract with the world’s largest-budget team, the $18 million T-Mobile squad of Germany. So instead of racing in the shadow of the much more famous world road champion Tom Boonen and Olympic road champion Paolo Bettini at Team Quick Step, Rogers is now second-in-command to Jan Ullrich — whom Rogers is slated to replace when the Tour de France star retires.
At 6-foot-3 and 158 pounds, Rogers commands attention both off and on the bike. Last month, he was a major attraction at the T-Mobile team presentation in Majorca, Spain. He spoke toVeloNews as January sunshine splashed off the multiple swimming pools at the Robinson Club vacation complex on the southeast coast of the Mediterranean island.
We first asked Rogers whether a change of teams from the Belgian-based Quick Step to German-based T-Mobile had also changed his winter training schedule: "No real changes for me," he replied. "I’ve probably done a little bit less than last year. I had a very long rest [after riding my last race in mid-October]. I was married and had a nice honeymoon in the States. Went to New York and Miami. We had a great time. Then I bowled back to Australia and started training in December. I feel good. I did a test here a few days ago, and that’s in line with every other year…. So I’m happy: I did less and got the same results."
| Factfile: Michael Rogers Born: December 20, 1979 at Barham, Australia. Resides: with wife Alessia in Minore, Italy. Height: 6 foot 3 Weight: 158 pounds Turned pro: 2003 Teams: T-Mobile (2006), Quick Step (2003-05), Mapei espoirs (2001-02). UCI ProTour ranking: 26TH Website: www.mickrogers.com.au Major performances: 2005: 1st world TT championship; 2nd overall, Tour of Switzerland; 2nd, Chrono des Herbiers; 4th overall, Tour of Catalonia; 7th overall, Tour of Britain; 7th overall, Tour of the Basque Country; 41st overall, Tour de France. 2004: 1st, world TT championship; 4th, Olympic TT; 4th, GP des Nations; 6th overall, Tour of Luxembourg; 22nd overall, Tour de France. 2003: 1st, world TT championship; 1st overall, Tour of Germany (plus TT stage win); 1st overall, Tour of Belgium (plus TT stage win); 1st overall, Route du Sud (plus TT stage win); 42nd overall, Tour de France. 2002: 1st overall, Tour Down Under (plus one stage win); 1st overall, GP de Beauce. |
His wife, Alessia, comes from a small town near Varese. They married last fall, around the same time as his countryman Cadel Evans, who also married an Italian from near Varese. "Well, you wouldn’t believe it," Rogers said. "Our towns are only 10K from each other. Two Aussie guys, both married to Italians."
While Evans — who also is riding the Tour of California — started his season in Aussie, Rogers needed to be in Europe for a couple of team training camps and the splashy team presentation attended by 200 reporters from the German media. There was also another reason. "I would have liked to do the Tour Down Under," Rogers explained, "but the team, I think, is a little bit cautious about the race because over the past couple of years some of their riders came back from the race too tired…. For the Aussies it’s all right, at least the Aussie pros. They do November and December training in the heat. But to arrive from sub-zero conditions in Europe to sometimes 35, 40 degrees [100 degrees Fahrenheit], that’s really hard."
Also, Rogers has a long season ahead of him. "That’s right, yeah," he continued. "I start with the Tour of California. We decided I couldn’t do the Commonwealth Games [in March] because … it would have made it just too long a year. I had a really, really long year that’s just gone and I was quite tired at the end of it. I feel refreshed now and I’m looking forward to the season."
Having such a long season worked against Rogers last year, particularly in terms of fatigue going into July’s Tour de France. Does he realize now that he did too much before the Tour and probably went into it over-tired? "Yeah, I think so, yeah. Looking back…"
We speculated that Rogers — who started the Tour only two weeks after battling to second overall at the Tour of Switzerland — made a similar mistake as a youthful Lance Armstrong, who at the same age in 1996 burned his matches in Switzerland and then quit the Tour after only a week.
"Yeah," Rogers said, "I mean, it takes time to learn … that’s life. Unfortunately, you can’t be an expert at the Tour overnight. You really do have to do three or four of ’em before you’re learning the ropes. I suppose it’s like anything, you know. It takes a long time to be good at anything — and it’s hard. And if it wasn’t hard everyone would be a Tour de France winner. It’s a unique thing and it takes a lot of experience…. When you’re young, when you’re 21 or 22, you sometimes think you can take on the world, but that usually comes back and bites you in the bum."
His general fatigue from starting to race in January was accentuated by Rogers falling sick when he was the race leader at the Tour of Switzerland. "I was pretty bad," he recalled. "I had a really high fever of 40, 41 degrees [105 degrees F]. Without that I definitely could have won the race. So I think I went into the Tour on the back foot [a cricket term for playing on the defensive], which obviously isn’t ideal."
Besides starting his season a month later this year Rogers will have a lighter racing schedule, with California being followed by the Coppi and Bartali Week in Italy, Spain’s Tour of Aragon, and perhaps Belgium’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic. His main preparation for the Tour will be the Giro d’Italia, which ends a month before the start in Strasbourg on July 1. Perhaps the Giro will bring him to the Tour, where he will be Ullrich’s right-hand man, in much better condition. "Certainly," he agreed. "Like I said, I feel like I’m kind of learning what’s the right [Tour] preparation for me. So I’ll go to try the Tour of Italy, and I don’t think I’ll be doing any racing in between that and the Tour. At home [in Italy] I can train at quite a high level."
Surprisingly, Rogers, after three years as a full professional with Quick Step and two initial seasons with the Mapei team’s under-23 squad, does not have a personal coach. "I think I’m getting pretty good at learning what I need to do now," he said. "Also, I get some help from the team. They’re obviously quite experienced…. And it’s all new for me again this year. I believe every now and then you need some change and some new stimulation, and a new environment. This is what I really needed, I feel. In Quick Step, being in the same team, you get into a routine and it’s hard to come out of it. And sometimes you need to be forced out of that routine to see the light…. I’m really looking forward to this year. It’s gonna be great."
Part of moving to a new team means getting used to a new regimen, new teammates and new equipment. For Rogers, that has meant switching from his world’s-winning custom Time time-trial bike to a Giant. Rogers said the change was easier than he expected. "I’ve been [on the Giant] in the wind tunnel … at the Audi factory in Ingolstadt, Germany. I was able to improve marginally over my position I had at the world championships. And we’re scheduled to be back again in a month or two to try and improve [further]. It’s such a time-consuming procedure, changing positions, changing parts, so that chews up the day relatively fast. You really do need two or three days in there to get the full benefit."
That wind-tunnel testing should help Rogers in the Tour of California time trials, particularly the one at San Jose next Wednesday. His three world time-trial titles have all been won on similar circuits that featured a good proportion of climbing and descending. He said he was going to further perfect his riding position during the January training camp and that he likes "to train at least once a week during the year on my time-trial bike."
Rogers thought that his much looser racing schedule will give him time to scout some stages of the Giro, which he’s scheduled to ride with Ullrich and much of T-Mobile’s Tour squad. "Which stages I don’t know yet," Rogers said. "I would presume it’d be the mountain stages. I would like personally to see the time-trial courses, and I think Jan would want to do the same.
The tall Aussie added that he was looking forward to riding the Giro and the Tour with Ullrich. "Jan says to me that he thinks he had his best year when he did the Giro [in 2003]. The Giro’s really, really hard this year; that last week looks like torture. If [we] can get through that without going too deep — I don’t think I’ll be there for the general classification; just to get through the stages is a big effort. If I can get to the Tour with a few of those days under my belt it’ll me an advantage for me."
Climbing, along with the time-trial training, is a big focus for Rogers. "I do a lot of my work based on power. The team’s doctors and trainers know how to get the best out of athletes with training, so there’ll be a set routine [for me]. If you’re tired there’s always a bit of room for change and variation to the program, but that’s a bit of a guide."
Rogers said that he often trains with a group of other pro racers around Varese, including his new T-Mobile teammates Daniele Nardello and Stefano Guerini. They all time themselves on the area’s many climbs. "There’s always a bit of competition who can get the best times," he said, adding that former Italian racer Claudio Chiappucci holds most of the records.
"The times I don’t really know yet," Rogers said, "but apparently I’m pretty close on some of them. Time doesn’t lie, does it? That’s the best way to know what your condition is, certainly. We have a climb about 30 kilometers from my house, Capo Fiore, up behind Varese. It’s about 10 kilometers long, really steep. I can get up it in about 23 minutes, which is not too far off [the record]. But I’ve never really done it full gas."
As for his TT training, Rogers said, "I have a circuit [for which] I know my best times. That’s about 15 kilometers and I can [time myself] to see my condition. But I’m getting to the point now that I can feel it in my legs also, so I don’t have to do it on that circuit to know.
"I was relatively nervous going to the world championships last year. Two, three weeks out, I didn’t think it was all coming together. But four days before [traveling to Madrid] … there’s a little climb on the circuit I do and I usually can’t do the whole climb in the big ring. But I was able to do it in a 54 and I knew from then I was on par and able to do it again."
Rogers has demonstrated that he is able to use his time-trial strength all year long. A quick look at his palmarès shows that his overall victories at the Tour of Germany, Tour of Belgium and Route du Sud in the early summer of 2003 all included his winning the TT stages. By winning those shorter stage races, the Aussie also proved that he has the climbing talent to do well in the grand tours, while his three Tour finishes (42nd, 22nd and 41st) shows he has the stamina to step up to contender level when the time comes.
Despite his height, Rogers is comparatively slim and says he never puts on more than 2 or 3 kilos (4 to 6 pounds) in the off-season. Living in Italy for the past five years has also been a blessing, he said. "One of the beauties about Italian food is that even the normal people eat like bike riders — lots of pasta, plain meats, no sauces, very lean food. I think it’s perfect for bike riders."
Things are even more perfect now that Rogers enjoys home cooking on a regular basis; new wife Alessia likes to cook. "She’s a kindergarten teacher," he said. "She has a class of 20 little kids. I don’t know how she does it. That’s a lot of children to look after, but she loves it."
Besides getting used to marriage, Rogers is also getting to know a whole slew of new teammates and team officials. It seems that that process is also going well. "Maybe the get-together we had in Munich and [the Montafon ski resort in the Austrian Alps] at the end of November was good because it had nothing to do with bike riding. We had a muck-around the mountains … and had snow fights. I think it was really good for team bonding ... and made us all a little bit closer," he said. "I got to see another side of the sport directors that you usually don’t see. You only see the image that they project at the races … and everyone is a little bit nervous and uptight at the races."
In one exercise at the ski resort, the T-Mobile riders were blindfolded. "It was for teamwork actually," Rogers said. "It was good fun. I’d never done anything like that before, you know. We all had an idea that it was going to be something like CSC does, get all dressed up in camouflage [and head into the woods]. But it was just a bunch of guys having fun."
Describing the most memorable team exercise, Rogers said, "We had to arrive together at a checkpoint in the snow after going 400 meters in the snow blindfolded. We broke up into teams and every person had to learn their 50 or so meters. Everyone was attached to each other, and after your 50 meters of leading, you went to the back."
Rogers said that part of the exercise was to stay linked together even when someone slipped in the snow. "I was probably the worst out of everyone," he said. "I thought I’d learned my part of the track pretty well, but I went in the wrong direction straightaway."
But Rogers clearly seems to be headed in the right direction with T-Mobile. He is at ease in his new environment, and when he heads up Telegraph Hill in San Francisco on Sunday wearing the rainbow jersey, he will certainly make a few heads turn — just as he should on the roads of Italy and France later in the year.
