< >采访克罗丹</P><>15.12.2004/ More than four months have elapsed since T-Mobile rider Andreas Klöden stormed his way to a sensational second place at the Tour de France. Since then certain things have changed in his life. Bike magazine Pro-Cycling caught up with him at his house in Kreuzlingen, on the Swiss bank of Lake Constance. Here are some extracts - the full interview appears in December\'s German language edition of the magazine.
<b>ro-Cycling: You are just back from a smashing three-week holiday on the Seychelles. Did you miss your bike when you were over there? </b>
<b>Andreas Klöden:</b> I got back on my bike again straight after returning home. I had a relatively long break before that, as my last race was a criterium in Wangen, on September 19th. I ended my season early, but I also returned to training early, on November 3rd.
<b>Do you do a lot of work on the indoor trainer? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>I have a Schoberer Indoor Trainer standing in my training room, but I only use it if the weather is really very bad. Then I do two hours indoors, and watch some cycling DVDs or films at the same time. I am a big fan of science fiction and action films. Happy Gilmore with Adam Sandler is another one that I particularly liked. And I listen to a lot of music.
<b>What kind of training will you be doing in South Africa? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>80 per cent of it will be endurance training, and I will also mix that with some power training for climbing.
<b>Do you already know how long you will be staying there? </b>
<b>Klöden:</b> I fly out on December 1st and stay almost the whole month; Bettina and Felicitas come over on December 19th, together with the families of the other riders who are staying on, then we will celebrate Christmas together. Other years I always flew back around the 23rd, but because the weather here is so bad, I have decided this time to stay down there longer. So no white Christmas for me this year!.\"
<b>How did you find the team get-together in Amsterdam? </b>
<b>Klöden:</b> It was good to see the new faces and get to know them. It was also a chance to meet up again with all the other T-Mobile riders who I hadn\'t seen for a while; apart from the two week team training camp in January we hardly ever come together during the season. For most of the season I only have contact with the stage race riders.
<b>Have you already fixed your race schedule for the 2005 season?</b>
<b>Klöden:</b> The sporting management, Mario Kummer and Walter Godefroot, detail a program for every rider, which is used as a starting point for discussions. You can look at it and say which races you want to ride or avoid. For the most part, my plan is the same as last season. However, this year my season won\'t start at the Tour of Majorca in the first week of February, but at the Tour of Valencia in the last week of February. So I will go ahead with my training schedule until February 22nd. Then in March I will race the Tour of the Basque Country, Tirreno Adriatico and the Critérium International. After that I will ride some classics: Flèche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
<b>If you all arrive at the Tour, unaffected by illnesses or injury, then you, Jan and Alexander Vinokourov are in a good starting position for an assault on the yellow jersey, don\'t you think? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>For me, personally, it is important that I can tackle the Tour with similar, or even better, form than last year. Jan and Vino have the same goals; they want their form to peak for the Tour. If everyone then can ride to their limits, we will have a really strong team that can shake things up in the GC. But it is much too early now to be speculating on how our Tour line-up will look.
<b>At night when you think about the 2005 Tour, do you dream about winning it? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>Well, I don\'t want to talk about winning it. I dream that my preparations for the Tour can go as well as they did this year, and that I can put the training program, that i have devised with Thomas Schediwie, into action. Then everything is possible at the Tour. In the last few years I have had a lot of setbacks with back problems, knee problems and other health problems - that stopped me from building on the potential that I showed in 2000. I was suffering from one setback after another. A lot of people weren\'t aware of this, and simply assumed that after signing a good contract, that I had lost the hunger to succeed. If Jan arrives at the Tour, like he did in 1997, then he is a bigger contender than Alex or I. But with the three of us at the top of our game, we can make life bloody hard for Lance. When Lance accelerates on the climbs, then one of us has always got to stay on his wheel.
<b>Your trainer Thomas Schediwie gave you moral support when things weren\'t going well; he is supposed to have helped you to believe in yourself. Is it as easy as it sounds? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>As a trainer Thomas is more than just a theorist. I am the type of guy that you just can\'t impose a training program on, and then expect me to follow it without asking questions. I need to be convinced of the value of the training that is being suggested to me. Once I am convinced by it, then I can approach the program with much more focus. Thomas, who has been working with me for a number of years, is something of a psychologist. He asks me how things are going in my private life, in my relationship, with my family. He knows my envronment and he takes it into account. Thomas often visits me here and accompanies me on training rides. You could describe him as a very hands-on tainer.
<b>You are only the third German, after Kurt Stöpel and Jan Ullrich, to finish runner-up in the Tour, but this performance seems to have been somewhat overlooked soon after the Tour... </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>Yeah, and that annoyed me. And also the fact that Jan\'s little quarrel with Walter ended up attracting more publicity than my second-place, or our win in the team classification. At the team get-together in Holland we sat down to discuss how to avoid this kind of publicity in future and resolved that from now on all issues should be cleared up internally first. Mistakes were also made by the team management. Anyway, the media sort of skewed the whole Tour de France story until it was just about Jan und Walter, and yet straight after the HEW-Cyclassics in Hamburg the whole thing had blown over. That did anger me. Back when Udo Bölts came in ninth in the Tour (1994 ed.), the press spent weeks focusing on it. Oh well, Jan has raised the barometer of public expectations somewhat.
<b>Was is clear from day one that you would stay at T-Mobile? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>Tony Rominger, my manager, said to me at the start of the year: \'I think that you have huge potential. Think long and hard about whether you want to leave T-Mobile and move to a team where you can be the outright captain, as that won\'t be possible at T-Mobile.\' That stopped me in my tracks. I thought to myself: \'Maybe he is right. Maybe I should start to look around a bit.\' I had talks with Manolo Saiz at Liberty Seguros, José-Miguel Echavarri at Banesto and with Phonak.
<b>The decision making process, how long did it last? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>Initially I always said that I had a lot to be thankful to Telekom/T-Mobile for, because they stood by my during the two years when things weren\'t working out for me on the bike. I wanted to stay. Then I thought to myself that maybe it was the right time to move on; after all I have been riding for the same team for seven years now. But I realised that I should have made the move sooner. I turn 30 next year and I am not really one for tackling foreign languages - and I would have had to learn a new language. Still, I would advise younger riders to go ahead and try things out; just like Jörg Jaksche and Patrik Sinkewitz have joined teams abroad. T-Mobile is a great team. I have got all that I need there. Plus I now have a better standing here than at any time in the last two years. What\'s more, the pressure and expectations here is shared and carried on the shoulders of Jan, Alex and Ete Zabel.
<b>What are your thoughts on Lance Armstrong? </b>
<b>Klöden:</b> You have got to say that he is a brilliant team leader - the team always runs so smoothly. He always appears to have great acumen, as far as his Tour roster goes. It is certainly doesn\'t do any harm to ride in a team like that, always learning new tricks. Roberto Heras learned a lot during his three years there. You have got to admit that Armstrong is a great teacher.
<b>Why do you think that US Postal didn\'t inquire about you, either directly or through Tony Rominger ? </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>I think that Armstrong somehow has a problem with T-Mobile. If I had been riding for any other team, then he would almost certainly have made inquiries about me riding alongside him in 2005. Why exactly he has a problem with T-Mobile, that I don\'t know. After the stage to Le Grand Bornand (the famous \'no gifts\' stage. ed) he approached me after the race, to tell me that it was nothing personal. Yeah ok, I thought; What am I supposed to say about that, and what does you want to hear from me!? You could see that he and Johan Bruyneel either had a problem with Ullrich and Pevenage, or else were just generally feeling provoked, like in their thin-skinned reaction to the behaviour of the French fans. Sure it is not pleasant, when you are riding up the mountain and the fans are permanently booing you.
<b>They say that the French, in particular, always favour the underdog over an all-conquering winner... </b>
<b>Klöden: </b>I really believe that they can\'t stand Armstrong. But that was never the the case with Indurain; that\'s basically because Indurain was a gentleman. Armstrong comes across as being so \'up-tight\'. If he really wanted more recognition from the French public, then he could very easily have let me win that stage! In a similar situation, someone like Indurain definitely wouldn\'t have sprinted me down. All said, Armstrong has got only himself to blame for his poor relationship with the fans. But maybe that motivates him more.
<b>You are well placed to observe the extent of Jan\'s cross-over fame since his 1997 Tour win. Should you also be so successful in the coming years, is it something that scares you or would you just take it in your stride?</b>
<b>Klöden: </b>My chief objective when riding my bike is to be successful. I don\'t think about the flip side. if the question is put to me: \'Do you want to figure in the public eye as much as Jan, or would you prefer not to win the Tour?\', then I would of course alway plump for the Tour win. That is the \'big one\' that I have been working towards since I was eleven years old. At that time I was, of course, not thinking in terms of the Tour but cycling has been my passion since then</P> |
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