Biography
Jens Voigt was born in
Grevesmühlen,
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in the
same area as later
Tour de France winner
Jan Ullrich. He won the
Peace Race as an amateur in 1994, and
topped the
UCI "Challenge Mondial Amateurs"
rankings in December 1994. After a career in the
German Army, he started his
professional cycling career in 1997, winning races for small
Australian team
ZVVZ Giant Australian
Institute of Sport.In 1998,
with the support of his former Australian Institute of Sport Sports
Director, German born Heiko Salzwedel, he moved on to the big
French team
GAN (now
Crédit Agricole)
where he spent the next five years amassing more than 20 major wins,
among them a day in the maillot jaune in the
2000 Tour de France, and a stage win in
the
2001 Tour de France. Furthermore, Voigt
played a part in Jan Ullrich's
2000 Olympic Games win for the German
national team.
In 2004 Voigt moved to Danish
Team CSC, where he would meet up with
former Crédit Agricole teammate
Bobby Julich. Together they form a
strong pair, both being great tempo specialists, and they have dominated
the 2004 and 2005 editions of the
LuK Challenge
race, a two-man
time trial, together.
Jens Voigt rode the
2004 Tour de France for Team CSC
captain
Ivan Basso, throughout the 20 stages of
the race, Jens Voigt and team mate
Jakob Piil
was more often than not seen in breakaways, 'covering the break' for
team CSC. On the 15th stage, Voigt was in yet another break, as Jan
Ullrich attacked up the mountain of
Col de l'Echarasson, gapping both race
leader
Lance Armstrong as well as then 2nd
placed Ivan Basso. With Armstrong's team seemingly unable to pull
Ullrich back in, Jens Voigt was ordered back from his break-away to help
Ivan Basso defend his podium placement. Voigt saw Ullrich drive past him
as he waited for his captain, before he single-handedly closed the gap
to Ullrich. At the next day, the riders were to ride an individual time
trial up the
Alpe d'Huez
mountain with 900,000 spectators at the roadside. Voigt was heckled by
German fans on his way up the mountain, calling him
Judas for his effort to ruin fellow
German Ullrich's chances. Jens Voigt reacted strongly against the
treatment by criticising German TV-channel
ARD for starting a
witch-hunt against him, and he pleaded
that his salary was being paid by Team CSC, not Germany.
At the start of the 2005 season, Jens Voigt took
the victory in the stage race of
Tour Méditerranéen, ahead of team mates
Fränk Schleck
placed 2nd and
Nicki Sørensen
in 4th place. Jens Voigt won the very first UCI ProTour event, as he
clinched the
prologue time trial of the 2005
Paris-Nice, a race Bobby Julich won
overall. Voigt nearly won the 2005 edition of the
classic
Liège-Bastogne-Liège when he was beaten
at the finish line by
Alexandre Vinokourov,
Jens Voigt having been on a breakaway for almost the entire race.
After a strong placing in the stage 1 time trial
of the
2005 Tour de France, Jens Voigt was
only trailing race leader Lance Armstrong by 1 minute, and in the
following stages Voigt tried hard to take the overall lead. He
subsequently took part in many attacks, and at the 9th stage, the stage
before the first resting day, Voigt finally got in a break-away that
lasted to the finishing line and finished third, 3 minutes ahead of
Armstrong. Jens Voigt's time in the maillot jaune would be short lived
however, as he fell to 168th place at stage 10 after suffering from a
fever, and he was eliminated from the race for failing to finish stage
11 within the required time limit. Following his consistent riding, Jens
Voigt ended the 2005 season as 29th ranked rider on the
UCI ProTour
individual rankings.
For the 2006 season, Voigt started out
comparatively slower than in 2005 in order to save his energy for
helping Ivan Basso in attempting to win both the
2006 Giro d'Italia and
2006 Tour de France races.[5]
His only result of note until the Giro started in May, was Voigt's
traditional attack on the fifth stage of the ProTour race
Vuelta al País Vasco,
but he had to settle for second place behind stage winner
Thomas Voeckler.
For the Giro d'Italia, Voigt rode in support of
Basso. Following Team CSC's
team time trial win on stage 5, Voigt
found himself in second place, only trailing race leader
Serhiy Honchar
by six seconds. During the first mountain stages of the Giro, Voigt
helped Basso take the overall lead of the race, while he slid down the
leader board and eventually finished as the 37th ranked rider. On the
mountainous stage 19 of the Giro, both Voigt and Julich were in a 20-man
breakaway, but as Team CSC was leading the
peloton in order to defend Basso's
first place, Voigt and Julich did not work in the breakaway. Up the last
climb of the stage, Voigt was alone with Spanish rider
Juan Manuel Gárate, but as Voigt did
not think he had done enough work on the stage to deserve the victory,
he let Garate take the stage win.[6]
Voigt finally got his first win of the season in the
Ster Elektrotoer
race in June. Here he won stage 4 and helped teammate
Kurt Asle Arvesen to the overall win,
just two weeks before the start of the Tour de France.
In the days before the Tour, Ivan Basso was
suspended by Team CSC after his name had been brought up in the
Operación Puerto
doping investigation. This meant that
Carlos Sastre would become new team
captain. Voigt took the role of early attacker, in order to lessen the
workload for the team, and he formed or joined a number of unsuccessful
breakaways on several stages. On stage 13 from Béziers to Montélimar,
the longest stage of the 2006 Tour of 231 kilometers, Voigt got in a
five-man breakaway which finished 29 minutes and 58 seconds ahead of the
main bunch of riders. At the finish line, Voigt outsprinted
Óscar Pereiro
in order to take his second Tour de France stage win. On Stage 15, Voigt
again helped his teammates, this time it was up-coming climber
Fränk Schleck
from Luxembourg, by pulling hard in the breakaway with teammate
David Zabriskie of the USA, which
eventually gave Schleck the win. Voigt finished the 2006 Tour in 53rd
place, while helping Sastre finish 4th overall.
The above article is taken from wikipedia's
article on Jens Voigt. |