HTC Women

Flavio Becca

The tycoon who put millions into Leopard Trek

Miguel Indurain

How the 1996 Vuelta marked the end of days for this Spanish icon

Ben Spies

The MotoGP sensation making a splash in US road racing

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INSIDE THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST SPORT

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Judith Arndt won the World Time Trial Championship in Copenhagen by 22 seconds

Unequal Opportunities With a time trial gold and road race bronze respectively at the Worlds, Judith Arndt and Ina-Yoko Teutenberg are two of the finest cyclists on the planet. Yet most people know almost nothing about them because the women’s sport continues to lag far behind the men’s in all respects.

On top of that, German cycling is struggling to rebuild its credibility and their HTC-Highroad team is closing. Here, the teutonic talents speculate on what their futures hold Writer: Daniel Friebe

Ina, let’s start with you. A bittersweet bronze medal in the road race?

IT: No, I was quite happy with a bronze but a bit disappointed it wasn’t gold. I’ve beaten Giorgia Bronzini regularly this year but, to be honest, I don’t really like uphill sprints like the one in Copenhagen.

What is it with Marianne Vos? That’s five consecutive road race silver medals now…

IT: I don’t know. You can’t even say that she messed up. I think she was the fastest in Copenhagen but she just didn’t get the timing right. Which isn’t to say that Bronzini didn’t deserve to win – she was the smartest and you can’t win on a finish like that if you don’t have good legs. If you look at Marianne’s five second places,

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Photography: Tim De Waele

something’s just gone slightly wrong every time: in 2007, Marta Bastianelli rode away from everyone and Marianne’s team couldn’t bring her back; in 2008 she was maybe too motivated and got carried away – but that’s why we love her; in 2009 she was caught between two Italians; in 2010 she launched her sprint earlier than she’d have wanted because otherwise Judith and Nicole Cooke would have stayed away, and maybe this year she remembered that and waited a bit longer, against her instincts.

Judith, you’d had a lot of near misses in the Worlds TT in recent years. What was different this time?

JA: Everything has to be perfect and this year it was. My training, the bike, the course…it was all perfect. It wasn’t any particular improvement that I’d made. A

lot of our team have been in a wind tunnel but I’ve had the same position for years.

You two have both, it would seem, benefitted massively from a women’s team co-habiting with a men’s team and their sponsor. Sadly, at the end of 2011, Highroad will cease to exist…

IT: It’s obviously really sad to see the team go, especially as we won three of the four elite titles in Copenhagen yet still couldn’t get a sponsor. That’s pretty devastating.

At least, partly thanks to their success on our team, most of the guys haven’t had too much trouble finding something of a similar level somewhere else. For the girls, there’s almost nowhere you can get the same resources as we had at Highroad.

Something may be in the pipeline but we can’t really talk about it yet.

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HTC’s female stars | Unequal opportunities

INSIDE THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST SPORT

“In the late ’90s I got dropped by certain riders in the mountains and it just didn’t feel right. Since EPO and growth hormone testing has come in, though, it has seemed a lot fairer” IT: And we normally get more performance quotas than the guys because we’ve been relatively successful in the Olympics and the World Championships over the past few years.

and other times urine. I’ve been tested a few times at home in California by the UCI. At races we get the same number of tests as the guys.

Does the fact that men’s cycling is going through such a difficult time in Germany create an opportunity for the women?

Some of the top male riders say they’re tested 60 or 70 times a year. Roughly how many times is it for you?

JA: I’m not sure. People treat men’s and women’s cycling really differently but when it comes to drugs, they just put everyone in the same basket: it’s just cycling. That’s kind of annoying. They don’t distinguish. When I’m out on the road training, I still get people calling me a doper.

It isn’t nice.

IT: I’d say maybe 20, a bit more…

Do you feel a certain amount of bitterness towards Jan Ullrich and some of the others who contributed to that image? Some of those people are working in your team…

There have certainly been fewer scandals in women’s cycling but maybe one of the biggest ever has just broken: Jeannie Longo has been officially accused of missing dope tests, and anecdotally of taking EPO. What was your reaction to that news?

I would already say that her excuses aren’t good enough from my point of view. She’s been performing on a high level for so many years, she’s always been up to speed with other types of progress and technology in the sport, so why isn’t she up to speed with ADAMS? I have to do it, all the other girls have to do it – it’s just part of the game now. It’s the way we fight doping. As I said, it’d be devastating if her career ended on this note – all she’s achieved is no excuse for not doing it.

JA: It would be a shame but she has to take responsibility. There are no excuses.

Judith, do you think she took drugs?

JA: I don’t know. I can’t say.

JA: It’s a real shame. HTC-Highroad was simply the best team you could find as a female cyclist. It was so professional. Everything was done to make sure you only had to concentrate on riding your bike. At the same time, though, the staff always listened to the riders’ opinions about their race programmes and so on. It’ll be hard to recreate somewhere else. I have an agreement with someone for next year but can’t say where yet.

As this article went to press, former HTC-Highroad communications chief Kristy Scrymgeour announced that the team would evolve into a new structure to be named Specialized lululemon. Teutenberg was among the first riders unveiled in the new team, along with Amber Neben, Evelyn Stevens and Clara Hughes. Arndt was not on the same list of names.

Generally, Judith, would you agree that uniting men’s and women’s teams under the same sponsors is a good strategy to boost women’s cycling?

JA: It’s good for the sponsor as well as for us. It shows they are forward-looking socially. It reflects a modern outlook in a sport that sometimes has a hard time with that. Cycling has a lot of history, it seems old, and it maybe needs to change direction in that sense.

IT: Sponsors obviously want the men’s team

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because it’s so much more televised but that leads to a lot of people being hired and a lot of technical development and expertise. We end up benefiting from that. We’re all on the same wagon – what they get, we get. I think that’s just very hard to afford for an individual women’s team. While it’s a great shame that our team is closing, at least Rabobank and Green Edge are coming onboard.

I’m actually amazed that Rabobank didn’t start a women’s team years ago. They already sponsor all the Dutch national teams. When you look at what the Nederland Bloeit team have achieved this year, and all that Marianne Vos has won, it would almost have been strange if they hadn’t started a team. It’s peanuts for a company like that to run a women’s team.

Just going back to Highroad, it’s the end of your association with Bob Stapleton, who of course managed the women’s team before he took charge of the men.

IT: I probably have a different relationship with Bob from all the other girls. He pretty much saved my career. He called me up at the end of 2004, when I’d just taken a year out to have surgery. I’ve come a long way with him. He always supported us and made sure we felt like we were a part of the group and as important as the men. At the same time, he understood that we had a lot less to gain

than the men, that we were doing it out of passion mainly. For that reason he was a bit nicer to us.

Women’s cycling in Germany does nonetheless seem to have had pretty good structures – good races and teams and so on.

Is that true to say?

JA: Ja that’s true.

IT: We get help from the federations but I haven’t really been at the base very much lately to know what clubs and the federation still do. Even with the national team, you go to the Worlds for a week and that’s really all you do…

JA: The federation supports women’s cycling because it’s an Olympic sport.

“HTC -Highroad was simply the best team you could find as a female cyclist. It was so professional”

IT: I’m not bitter. It’s also down to the press and how they’ve treated it. In their eyes, cycling’s the black sheep. I’ve just read an interesting article by a French guy talking about doping in football, and asking how people can be naïve enough to think it’s not going on there. You get one of the top German soccer players, Michael Ballack, saying that he won’t do ADAMS [Anti-Doping Administration and Management System] because it’s an invasion of privacy. I mean, he’s making six million a year – he could actually employ someone who fills out his bloody ADAMs for three months. But he says no, that’s an invasion of his privacy. It’s like, yeah, that’s just a part of being in sport now. I think cycling does more than other sports but people don’t see it.

IT: No, because I won some non-UCI races where you don’t get tested. So maybe 25-30 in all. But also bear in mind that we do fewer races.

IT: It’s devastating. We don’t know whether it’s a Michael Rasmussen-type situation yet – but

The resources are smaller, the stakes are lower, but is there also a very different attitude to doping among female riders?

IT: In the late ’90s I went to certain races and got dropped by certain riders in the mountains and it just didn’t feel right. Since EPO and growth hormone testing has come in, though, it has seemed a lot fairer. There are many talented young riders coming through and they’ve gradually replaced the ones who were maybe not playing by the rules. At the end of the ’90s, yeah, I certainly felt that I was cheated out of some races but that’s no longer happening…

JA: Yeah, I’d say the same.

Teutenberg (left) with HTC team-mates Fahlin, Stevens and Cavendish on a training camp ride

The UCI have ploughed a vast amount of money and resources into testing in men’s cycling over the past few years. Has there been a similar investment and improvement in testing in women’s racing?

PhotographY: © Bettiniphoto (opposite left)

Teutenberg says that women’s cycling is as good to watch as men’s and deserves more TV coverage

JA: Not more?

JA: Yeah and no. I think we’ve been tested a fair amount since we started using ADAMS in 2006.

IT: Also, in Germany, I think our federation has to test us a certain number of times, otherwise we can’t go to the Worlds. I think they have a top test pool with a quota. That’s a couple of blood tests

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IT: It’s funny because a lot of people watch our World Championship races and the feedback is really good. They’re usually great races. People involved in cycling, men’s cycling, who only watch one women’s race every year are often amazed.

People told me that the 2009 Varese women’s road race was one of the most exciting races they’d ever seen. These are guys who have been in the industry for 40 years saying this… And yet they still don’t show our races.

Would you agree that the lack of a major, blue riband stage race is also a handicap? The women’s Tour de France has come and gone in different guises and never established itself as the fulcrum of the season. If you had an event that could do that, it would give women’s cycling a major boost, wouldn’t it?

14 years since taking a bronze medal at her first attempt at the Worlds TT, Arndt finally won the title

Would it be true to say that, Longo’s achievements notwithstanding, women’s cycling has never had a real marquee name who ticked all the marketing men’s boxes, who could propel women’s cycling into the international mainstream?

IT: Well, you had Leontien Van Moorsel. She was huge in Holland. Her husband did a great job of promoting her and she’s still really well known.

And perhaps women’s cycling’s higher profile in that country now owes a lot to her….

IT: Ja, because that is the country with probably the most young talent at the moment. They have so many good girls under 25. No other country can keep up with them in that respect. Those girls probably all watched Leontien win three gold medals in 2000. They lived through that high. It’s hard even for Marianne Vos to capture the public imagination in Holland the way that Leontien did. But it’s a vicious circle: you don’t get the big, marketable personalities because people don’t see us on TV. At the moment, people know our names, may recognise our pictures, but don’t really see anything of our personalities or riding.

Changing the subject slightly, and talking again about the profile of women’s cycling,

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we spoke earlier about the association of women’s and men’s teams, but another important promotional tool for women’s cycling is staging the races in the same place and on the same day as the men’s equivalent…

IT: Yeah. I mean, when we have a one-day race on the same day as the guys it’s really exciting for us.

At Flèche, the people are already camped out there, waiting for the men’s race, but they cheer us just as much. Flèche isn’t my race but even coming up the Mur de Huy five minutes behind the winner is one of the best experiences of my season.

JA: What we really need is TV coverage. If you look at the exposure that other women’s sports such as skiing and swimming get, it’s hard to see why TV doesn’t show women’s cycling. You would think that they’d show our Flanders and Flèche, with them being on the same day, but it doesn’t happen. I’ve never understood that. Fortunately, it’s moving in the right direction. The UCI are putting a lot of effort into getting the World Cup races televised. In Asia and Australia, I think they want to start showing our World Cup races live.

That’s a good step. I think it’s only a matter of time before cycling is a lot more similar to other sports like athletics, tennis and swimming, in the sense that there’s not much difference between the profile of the men’s and women’s competition.

IT: Yes. With the Giro d’Italia they’re doing a good job because they actually show that on TV – about 15 or 20 minutes a day. It’s always on at the same time as the men’s Tour de France, so they show that on Italian TV and then a highlights show of the women’s Giro comes on straight afterwards.

In Italy, the cyclists are actually fairly well known.

They’re pretty big stars. That helps. So you probably don’t need hours at a time to start with – just get something on the TV. So, yeah, in fairness, that race does well and they seem to have more money every year because the organisation is getting better.

Judith, one bit of action that people did see and do remember was your one-fingered salute when you crossed the line in the Olympic road race at Athens. [Arndt later admitted that the gesture was directed at the German national selector over the nonselection of Arndt’s partner Petra Rossner]…

JA: That was a long time ago. It wasn’t planned.

I can’t say that I wouldn’t do it again because even at the time it just happened. It should not have happened but, you know, it’s sport, you suffer, you’re emotional, and sometimes you can’t keep control of yourself…

IT: Shit happens. It made a good photo.

JA: You know, people always want to see your positive emotions, but there’s also another side.

No one wants to see that.

At least you didn’t claim it was to do with the Battle of Agincourt, as Cavendish did when he gave a ‘V sign’ at the 2010 Tour of Romandy…

IT: At least he knows his history… or at least how to use Wikipedia!