Frankfurt/Main (dpa) – An amazing attack on the legendary Col du Tourmalet, a podium finish in the Roubaix Vélodrome and masses of sprint victories by a great hopeful.
In order to remember such successes in German cycling, you don’t have to look back to the doping-infested times around Jan Ullrich and Erik Zabel. A glance at 2019 is enough, when the new generation around Emanuel Buchmann, Nils Politt and Co. suddenly achieved great things. “If you look statistically, 2019 was a really big year for German cycling,” said Bora-hansgrohe team boss Ralph Denk of the German Press Agency.
Thanks to Buchmann’s fourth place in the Tour de France, Politt’s famous second place ride at Paris-Roubaix and a few victories by sprinter Pascal Ackermann, cycling Germany dreamed of triumphs and titles in grand tours and classics – like before, but without an aftertaste. But many of the high expectations were not fulfilled before Eschborn-Frankfurt, the first big home race in 2022 this Sunday. “These years weren’t the easiest for German cycling,” thinks realistically.
different concerns
Just a small dent or a big low? Denk points out that the individual cases are fundamentally different. First, the pandemic brought the entire World Tour to a standstill for several months in spring 2020. Then Germany’s hopefuls had to contend with different worries: Buchmann, fourth in the Tour, was repeatedly plagued by bad luck with falls, and after a difficult few years he should now come up trumps at the Giro d’Italia.
Ackermann struggled with form fluctuations and publicly disputed with the team management. Huge talent Lennard Kämna first complained about physical problems and later also a mental blockage. The 25-year-old was out for a long time and is now gradually attracting attention again.
Funktionär Denk describes 2019 as a “glamor year”, but also calls for realism. “We don’t have the concentrated load of talent that is there in some other countries. It’s a huge bureaucratic hurdle to organize bike races in Germany,” said the Bavarian. The smaller talent pool, the regulatory hurdles and the much greater enthusiasm for cycling itself in other countries are problems that are likely to have an even greater impact in the medium and long term than at present.
Ackermann is missing in Frankfurt
Denk named Maximilian Schachmann as an explicit ray of hope, who won the Paris-Nice tour in 2020 and 2021 and thus ensured the greatest German successes in the recent past. Kämna (2020) and Politt (2021) also secured daily victories in the Tour de France.
So now, at the end of the classic season, the famous race with the finish line in Frankfurt, in which Politt and veteran John Degenkolb are contenders for victory. The Germans could serve as a good omen: For the first time since 2019, the classic was not postponed because of Corona and will take place again on the traditional date on May Day.
The last time this was the case, Sprinter Ackermann won. The Palatinate is missing this time because of an injury. “Follow-up medical examinations have revealed a fracture to the coccyx from a previous fall. He will now recover and then return quickly,” said his team UAE Emirates.