Cycling
Former Ullrich team boss Godefroot is dead
01.09.2025 – 9:11 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Without Godefroot, the wave of success in German cycling around Jan Ullrich would hardly have existed in the 1990s. Now the team leader has died.
The cycling mourns the loss of Walter Godefroot. The long-time team boss of the former Tour-de France winner Jan Ullrich died at the age of 82. The Belga news agency and several media reported in Belgium.
Godefroot once led Team Telekom with Ullrich and Erik Zabel to the top of the world and thus ensured an unprecedented cycling boom in Germany. The Belgian had also gained many successes as a cycling professional. In the past few years, the ex-official had largely withdrawn from the public after having fallen into Parkinson’s.
When Godefroot was commissioned to lead the Telekom team in 1992, he had to do a lot of pioneering work. Within a few years, he basically built up a world-class team out of nowhere in which Ullrich, Erik Zabel and Co. celebrated successes.
The cycling of Godefroots determined for four decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, the triple father became the most successful Belgian cyclist after Eddy Merckx. In his homeland he won all the important classics, triumphed at Paris-Roubaix and won ten stages at the Tour de France.
“Walter’s death touches me deeply,” said Merckx: “With Roger de Vlaeminck I sometimes visited Walter. Walter was already very weak during our last visit and he was not doing well. He was a very decent man. If you made an appointment with him, he came.”
Godefroot was a great rival sporty, says Merckx: “His list of success is impressive. He was quick and very strong. He beat me twice at the Belgian championships.”
As team boss, Godefroot made the success. Godefroot was at the head of the Bonn Racing Rennbstall for 14 years and celebrated two tour victories with Bjarne Riis (1996) and Ullrich (1997) as well as numerous classic and stages on large tours. “It was great with Jan and Bjarne. But the problems were the enormous expectations, the great pressure of the public,” said Godefroot in retrospect. Especially with the big hype around Ullrich, the distant boss struggled.
When the doping devastations around the Telekom team became public in 2007, Godefroot had already said goodbye to the front row. He didn’t want to know anything about all the machinations. “I wasn’t the man behind the system,” said the Belgian. He had neither organized nor financed doping in the team. He was probably naive.