So it is with this standard autobiography that doesn't scratch much beyond the surface. On the second to the last page of the book, before the acknowledgements and all that, he writes that along with his 65 victories, including three stage wins of The Tour de France and two stints in Yellow, he broke his collarbone three times, but not once does he mention them in the previous 225 pages.
He doesn't neglect, however, his horrific crash on a descent in the 2009 Tour that left him unconscious, calling it one of his most painful memories. Along with all the grisly details, he adds that Lance Armstrong was the only cyclist, other than his teammates, to send him a message of concern while he was in the hospital. Earlier he mentioned that Lance twice tried to recruit him to his team, but he in no way defends his doping or character, other than to say, "He's not the devil." Fellow German Didi Senf will be glad to hear that.
Voigt is firm, though, in his condemnation of doping. Later in his career when he became a team elder he would address his teammates at their early season camps and threaten to come to their homes and burn them down if any of them doped and put the team and his livelihood in jeopardy.
Descending was not one of Voigt's strengths. As his career wound down his tolerance for risking his life on descents diminished. When his speed approached forty miles per hour he was out of his comfort zone and when it reached fifty he told himself, "I don't want to be doing this anymore." Still he clung on much later than most riders, until he was 42, riding in 17 Tours de France, the most of anybody along with George Hincapie and Stuart O'Grady. When he was 41 he extended his career one more year knowing he could still "dish out the pain" and felt the "need to suffer more before I can be happy with the decision to stop." He added, "My body promised me that it could keep it together for one more year as long as I promised to release it from all the stress, suffering and responsibility at the end of the year."
He also knew age was catching up to him when he began falling asleep in the team bus after a race. That cut into his reading time, one of his favorite pursuits, so much so that at one time he thought he'd like to open a bookstore. Instead, he's stuck to cycling, working as a team advisor and TV commentator. One of the best things about retirement is that when he travels now he doesn't have to stay in his hotel room and conserve energy. He can actually go sightseeing.
Unlike some cycling biographies, he doesn't wax on about his love of being on the bike, and going off on long rides simply for the joy of it, such as Chris Froome and Sean Yates do in their books. Training became a chore. He was glad to leave all the painful efforts behind. There was no chance of his making a comeback. "I simply don't want to hurt or suffer anymore," he wrote. He does claim though that that was his strength, and that he had a pain threshold ten to twenty per cent higher than most others. He doesn't claim to eat pain for breakfast, as some cyclists do, but it is a steady part of his diet and frequent theme of his book, as is the case of most cycling biographies.
Despite many significant wins, including the Peace Race and the Tour of Germany and the Critérium International five times along with his Tour de France successes, not once was he brought to tears by a win. As a youth growing up in East Germany, his father told him, "Boys don't cry." He asserts early on that only one thing brings his to tears, the birth of his children. He doe cite one instance of emotional, triumphal tears, those of Bobby Julich's family as they gaze up at Julich and Voigt on the podium at Paris-Nice. Julich took the win thanks to the efforts of Voigt leading him up the final climb, when he thought he could have left him behind and won the race himself. But Julich was the team leader in this race and had sacrificed himself for Voigt in other races, so he was happy to do it for him in this one.
His upbringing in East Germany, where life was centered on the common good and the collective, self-sacrifice was engrained in him, which inspired him throughout his career as a cyclist. When he was fourteen he left his family to attend a sports school. He missed home, but it laid the foundation for what he was to become, including learning "how to suffer." He didn't realize the deprivations of his life on the other side of the Iron Curtain until The Wall came down. He was astounded by the abundance of food, but he was most shocked when he began reading history books and discovered how he had been lied to growing up. He holds no grudges though, nor does his home town of Dassow, where in 2001 a street was named after him.
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