Olaf Ludwig won stages in the Tour de France and became an Olympic champion. He currently sees German cycling in a difficult position.
The three-time Tour de France stage winner Olaf Ludwig misses a German cyclist among the world’s best and sees a difficult situation for his sport in Germany.
“We have some good guys like Lennard Kämna, Nils Politt or Emanuel Buchmann who can always get to the front at certain points. They are great racing drivers. But I don’t think it’s enough to be able to be at the front consistently,” said the Olympic champion from 1988 in an interview as part of the Charity Bike Cup in Marbach.
Accordingly, Ludwig soberly assesses the enthusiasm for cycling in Germany. “I don’t think we can make Germany a cycling nation anymore,” said the 63-year-old.
Tour legend: “Not my cycling anymore”
“My impression is that, with the exception of football, Germans are only interested in sports when Germans are winning,” he said: “And in terms of cycling, only when it comes to the Tour de France.”
Ludwig once rode for the Telekom team in the Tour de France, then he moved to the racing team’s sporting management and was later also the team boss of Jan Ullrich, the only German Tour winner.
After the Fuentes scandal involving Ullrich and other professional cyclists, Ludwig also had to vacate his post. Today he follows the sport from a “certain distance”, as he says: “It’s no longer my cycling sport. But please don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean that in a judgmental way.”
With this, Ludwig addresses the professionalization and scientificization of cycling. But even in races like the Tour, things have to “go even higher, get more brutal,” said the former Peace Ride winner: “Four mountains? Oh no, let’s do five instead. Spectacle, spectacle, spectacle. It really has to be ?” A Tour de France is now “modern gladiatorship”.