ANDRÉ GREIPEL
The German sprinter looks back over the key developments behind his success
I had no clue about professional cycling. It was quite hard to get contracts for young German riders.
T-Mobile was a more international team. Gerolsteiner were also really international, so didn’t have many spaces for young German riders. I think it was hard for German riders to get a contract just because German cycling was not on the level it was a bit later.
It was like I was water-skiing because the speed was quite high.
I actually wanted to stop cycling. The peloton was just fast. I had Epstein-Barr virus at the beginning of that year, but didn’t find out until later. When they found out I had Epstein-Barr, I rested and then started to see the horizon.
I was overwhelmed to get a contract with T-Mobile in 2006.
The first team meeting was incredible. You were in a five-star hotel, everybody had an Audi, photo shoots with make-up... All the best. It was just amazing what they did. I was there seven years. It was really professional, looking at details from nutrition down to massage and stretching.
There was no real rivalry with Mark Cavendish on the team at that time because we had separate race programmes.
Of course, I would have liked to take part in the Tour earlier but they’re decisions for sports directors to make, and I understand. I don’t look back in anger, I had really good opportunities there. I won a lot of good races as well. We always called it the ‘B-Team’, but we were quite successful.
I did lead-outs for Gerald Ciolek, for Cav, but 2008 is when it turned.
It’s just the way it works in cycling, you have to make steps and the step is to lead out, to ride at the front. Not everybody is going to win races but when I started to win, I knew what
I had done before and appreciated everything the guys were doing for me.
Joining Lotto in 2011 was the opportunity of a lifetime.
I’m really happy I got the environment I needed to be successful. I also got to know the whole passion in Belgian cycling. It’s the number one sport, everybody loves it and it’s a lifestyle in Belgium, to get behind a cycling team.
My first Tour de France in 2011, [team-mate Philippe] Gilbert won the stage and we had the yellow jersey in my first Tour stage.
That was a day I will never forget. I crashed in the neutral zone as well and was bruised already before the Tour started. It’s a nice thing I can tell all my grandchildren, that at my first Tour I had a yellow jersey in the evening in the restaurant. The next day was a team time trial. When you have the yellow jersey in the team you have a lot of attention, but we didn’t do so well, so we forgot that pretty fast.
I’ve learned a lot about myself.
You can be dead, dead, dead but still always find some power because the team work for you. They give you so much confidence. This team ambience, the friendship you create, it was something special in the years with Lotto Soudal.
My worst day on the bike - that’s easy.
It’s the 2010 Giro d’Italia, the stage to L’Aquila. We did 262km in pouring rain, five to six degrees. I nearly stopped 10 times on that stage. My teammates kept me going. They were surrounding me so I could not get off my bike.
The characteristic of sprinters is changing.
They are all light, they can climb good and they’re fast as well. Gaviria, Viviani and Bennett, they are climbing really well and doing 70kmh in the sprint. It also comes down to aerodynamics. I’m a big rider but the finals are always quite hard, so it doesn’t make it easy to win races any more. If you don’t have the team behind you, it’s more difficult.
I could have stayed in the WorldTour, but I wanted a challenge.
Arkéa–Samsic is a team with a vision for the future and hopefully I can help them somehow to make that vision happen. I made the right choice.