Once Bitten, Germany’s relationship with the event
Doping scandals locked the Tour de France out of Germany. As the race makes a comeback in Düsseldorf, we examine how its absence hurt cycling in the country
But for Boris Johnson’s cold feet, the Tour de France would have been dropping in on London again this summer. In September 2015 the then London Mayor pulled the plug on the capital’s (winning) bid to host the Grand Départ just 24 hours before the contracts with race organiser ASO were due to be signed, arguing that the £35m cost, as cuts were biting, wasn’t value for money. ASO and race director Christian Prudhomme were a bit miffed. With noses out of joint, London will be at the back of the queue in future. There’s nothing wrong with pulling a bid, it’s just not very gentlemanly to do it so late in the day.
Into the breach, a year earlier than planned, stepped Düsseldorf. It was second time lucky for the city that, spurred on by the ideas and drive of former pro and Düsseldorf native Sven Teutenberg, missed out on the Grand Départ in 2010, when the mayor backing the bid died and his replacement had other ideas.
When current mayor, Thomas Geisel, picked up the baton, walking into ASO’s Paris office and exclaiming “We want the Tour de France!” it was given the go-ahead. It was pencilled in for either 2018 or 2019 but hastily brought forward following Boris’s flip-flopping.
If Britain had hosted the race for a second time in four years, even the most partisan fan would have felt it greedy. Particularly in comparison with Germany, who hasn’t hosted the Grand Départ since Berlin in 1987 and presented with so much as a fly-by since 2006. The Düsseldorf visit is a big deal, marking the biggest chapter in Germany’s renewing of its relationship with professional cycling after years where the scourge of doping turned it sour.
DRUGS DON’T WORK…
Jan Ullrich’s Tour de France win in 1997 – the first and still only by a German – saw the sport boom in Germany. Viewing figures on public television channels ARD and ZDF spiked and with Ullrich, alongside green jersey success for Erik Zabel, the sport prospered. ‘Der Kaiser’ was the biggest sports star in the country, but his palace was built on dubious foundations.
In the summer of 2006 Operación Puerto, the Spanish police doping investigation, steamrollered the sport. German riders were mired in it as the sport dove into a tailspin. Ullrich was one of those riders and was ushered out by T-Mobile, the German team (then called Telekom) with which he’d won the Tour, though he denied wrongdoing until 2013.
Other riders from the team, past and present, were embroiled in doping scandals, leading T-Mobile to pull its sponsorship at the end of 2007 – despite new management and a commitment to clean cycling with a
younger roster that included a young Mark Cavendish.
The following year ARD and ZDF announced their intention to stop broadcasts, though contracts forced them to continue until 2012. Despite the race being broadcast on Eurosport in Germany, where it was and still is free-to-air, it has far less visibility and pulled in a fraction of viewers. It left ASO with a financial hole to plug, with Germany, the race’s single biggest potential market in Europe, a population of 82m and the highest GDP, largely severing ties.
Three years later, ARD was back. With the purging of the Lance Armstrong years, the sport, under new leadership, looked to be moving on. The country again had a topranking team in Giant-Alpecin and charismatic stars like Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb, saying and doing the right things. By 2017, another German WorldTour team would be formed in Bora-Hansgrohe, which boasts the sport’s biggest star – Peter Sagan. The Tour de France announced its return with the Düsseldorf start and the Deutschland Tour, Germany’s biggest bike race, which rose and fell with the Ullrich years, would return in 2018, on Tour de France organiser ASO’s watch.
With ARD upping the ante this summer with 90-minute daily live shows of the Tour de France, and more on weekends, it seems like German pro cycling is on the rise once more.
REAL WORLD IMPACT
From a British perspective, given the raging storm at Team Sky, it’s interesting to know what happened to recreational cycling post-Puerto.
There was a thought-provoking line at the end of an editorial from The Observer newspaper in March. Commenting on the Jiffy Bag storm engulfing Team Sky, and whether Sir Dave Brailsford should keep his job, the paper wrote: “[His] personal fate is really of little importance. If this latest scandal derails the heartening boom in recreational cycling we’ve seen in Britain in recent years, then his legacy will truly be in the gutter.”
While it would be wrong to compare what happened in Germany during the Telekom years to what’s happening now in the UK with Team Sky – no anti-doping rules have been broken – it’s interesting to look at Germany’s history as to what effect a full-blown doping scandal would have here. We share commonalities with Germany; neither country is a pro cycling heartland; there are similar black and white attitudes to doping (as evidenced by the very grey area that Sir Bradley Wiggins triamcinolone injections fell into, and the subsequent backlash); they’ve enjoyed a similar pro cycling boom from a first-ever Tour de France win; and in both countries car is king, even if Germany has a better history of cycling for leisure and transport.
The data shows that while pro and elite cycling was hit hard – races disappeared, teams vanished, sponsorship ran dry and TV coverage stopped – it actually had little negative impact on how many people rode bikes. According to Zweirad-Industrie-Verband, the association of the cycling industry in Germany, the number of bikes in German households rose continuously from 2003 to 2016, from 60m to 70m.
Figures from the BDR, Germany’s cycling federation, showed that membership increased steadily from 1996 (124,237), before Ullrich’s Tour win, through to 2016 (139,350), with no huge changes when the doping can of worms was opened. Membership to British Cycling, in comparison, reached 125,000 in August 2016 – up a huge 75,000 since Wiggins’s 2012 win.
Less positive news comes from looking at German race licence figures; in 2002, there were 14,713 road licence holders and by 2016 this had shrunk to 10,881. The stats show a slow whittling away of a few hundred each year, rather than a sudden drop. The same trend can also be seen in track racing, despite not suffering the same reputational damage. Tellingly, there was no sudden rise in either membership or licences in the Jan Ullrich era (membership dropped by 219 in the year following his 1997 win).
A spokesman for the BDR said that post-2006, the fact that the quantity and quality of races for pros and youth/under-23 racers was wiped out only accounts in part to the decrease in licence holders. He argues that demographic challenges are as much to blame, such as increased competition from other leisure activities, longer school schedules and changes in work habits.
BIKE BUSINESS
German bike sales make the picture clearer still. Annual sales decreased last year to 4.06m (though the two preceding years were record ones). Turnover on bikes, however, rose from 2.42bn to 2.6bn in the year to 2016, with components rising from 5bn to 5.2bn.
“IF THIS LATEST SCANDAL DERAILS THE HEARTENING BOOM IN RECREATIONAL CYCLING WE’VE SEEN IN BRITAIN IN RECENT YEARS, THEN HIS LEGACY WILL TRULY BE IN THE GUTTER” The Observer
German manufacturers, such as Focus, Canyon, Cube and Continental are big players, with Focus owner Derby Cycle one of the three biggest bike makers in the world.
Riding bikes for fitness in Germany can be seen in the growth of the massive Velothon series, which combines pro races with closed-road sportives. Both Hamburg and Berlin have one, which attract up to 20,000 riders, with Hamburg, staged since 1996 alongside a pro race, thriving throughout the ‘doping years’.
Then there’s Eurobike, the world’s largest bike trade show, held annually in Friedrichshafen in southern Germany. The German bike industry has never been in such rude health.
Considering that race bikes account for just 4 per cent of the market, compared to 20 per cent urban/city bikes, 32 per cent for touring and 15 per cent e-bikes (the fastest growing sector), suggests that pro cycling is somewhat inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Unquestionably, the doping era damaged the pro game in Germany but cycling, in all its forms, existed long before Ullrich and is still going strong after him.
Britain has a stronger correlation between pro cycling success and recreational uptake. Success on both road and track, and events like the Yorkshire Grand Départ, have given visibility and significantly transformed the interest in recreational cycling, evidenced in the rise of British Cycling membership and the appearance of monster sportives like Prudential RideLondon.
Would an Ullrich scandal stop people riding? It’s hard to envisage. The sample size was only 143, but in a recent Cycling Plus Twitter poll, where we asked ‘Does what ‘goes on’ in the pro peloton affect your own relationship with cycling?’ only 10 per cent said it does. For sure, the sport being wiped from free-to-view TV schedules, as well as races going to the wall, would hit the volume of new people riding bikes, but for the converted the health and enjoyment benefits are too great to give up.
Back in Düsseldorf, Konrad Glaeser, who co-owns cycling shop and cafe Schicke Mütze, bought his first race bike in 2008 – just as the German scandal was reaching its nadir. Though he watches pro racing and enjoys it, would he let bad news stories derail his love for cycling? Not a chance. “I ride for myself, for the social and health benefits it brings. Watching any professional sport, I know that where there is money there will be cheating.”
SERIOUS STUFF
Like Brits, Germans take the subject seriously and find it hard to get past once it’s been committed. You only have to look at the way dopers assume pariah status once a violation has been committed. Both countries lead on the issue. As Prudhomme says of Germany’s reactions in the aftermath of the Ullrich era, “[they] showed through these events their insight. In a certain way they acted as a barometer of the troubles of our sport.”
Journalists from both countries have been at the heart of investigations into Russian doping in sport, which saw them a whisker away from being given a blanket ban from the Rio Olympics (though they were banned from the Paralympics). An important figure in this, in Germany and around the world, is Berlin-based journalist Hajo Seppelt. His work in 2006 helped expose the network of Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor at the heart of Operación Puerto, and more recently has produced documentaries that have shone a light on systematic doping in Russia, particularly in athletics.
Whether cycling is still dirty is understandably still a question on
“I RIDE FOR MYSELF, FOR THE SOCIAL AND HEALTH BENEFITS IT BRINGS. WATCHING ANY PROFESSIONAL SPORT, I KNOW THAT WHERE THERE IS MONEY THERE WILL BE CHEATING” Konrad Glaeser
people’s lips in Germany, and will be talked about in bars and restaurants as the race nears. What would Seppelt tell them?
He thinks the UCI has learned lessons from the Fuentes and Armstrong scandals and have engendered a tougher, better-policed anti-doping environment. However, he argues that the financial circumstances and difficulties of the sport remain the same as they were in the Armstrong and Puerto era and that you simply don’t know if the majority of the peloton has changed its mentality in regards to doping.
He does give credit to the star German riders like Marcel Kittel, John Degenkolb and Tony Martin for getting the problem: “They understand they have to take the subject 10 times more seriously than Jan Ullrich did. This is my current impression.”
For Teutenberg, he’s happy the new generation of riders are getting the reward of a Grand Départ: “They’ve worked hard and gone through tough times. Their results have made it possible for the Tour de France to start here.”
FRESH START?
As for Düsseldorf, it’s primed to put on a great show. It’s a charming city, full of culture, great food and drink, and the driven, 40-strong team working around the clock to deliver the race is full of confidence and enthusiasm. A city of 600,000 people is expected to swell to almost double that, with officials expecting 1m to line the streets across the weekend.
Does it mark a fresh start for cycling in Germany? Possibly. The Tour de France’s return to the country is undoubtedly a good thing: good for Düsseldorf, looking to boost regular cycling from 14 per cent to 25 per cent in a city where car is king; good for the sport, to bring it back to Europe’s largest country; and good for ASO, in business terms.
Whether it manages to change attitudes about pro cycling depends on how deep your knowledge of the sport is.
For confirmed fans, there’s too much water under the bridge for a total reset, though they can take solace in the fact that there have been no doping scandals or top riders testing positive for years now. Of course, that doesn’t make it clean, but the obstacles to doping are unquestionably higher than they were circa 2006, with the introduction of the biological passport and a beefedup whereabouts program.
For curious newcomers, doping might be the first and only thing they know about the sport; though fans can’t assure them the sport has had a top-to-toe scrub down, it has at least, over the past decade, enjoyed substantially more than a sink wash.
It’s just unlikely, if history is any guide, that the Grand Départ will have much influence beyond Düsseldorf in Germany in getting folk riding. The bike as both transport and leisure is on the rise anyway, and has been for the past two decades, irrespective of pro cycling and its unrivalled ability to swing between the stars and the gutter.
“THEY [MARCEL KITTEL, JOHN DEGENKOLB, TONY MARTIN] UNDERSTAND THEY HAVE TO TAKE THE SUBJECT 10 TIMES MORE SERIOUSLY THAN JAN ULLRICH DID” Hajo Seppelt