As the 2009 season got under way, we had to try our best to put Carlos’s farewell to the team behind us. From a sporting point of view, everything now revolved around the Schleck brothers for the Tour and Fabian Cancellara for the Classics. Frank Schleck had already shown at Paris-Nice in March that it was going to be a big season for him and his brother, finishing second overall in the week-long stage race.
Frank was the kind of rider who you had to push to make him believe in himself but, at nearly 29, it was time for us to put more responsibility on his shoulders and for him to learn to feel comfortable with people’s expectations of him. His little brother, Andy, was my big hope for the season. With his gung-ho attitude, he was a lot less risk-averse than Frank, and had real potential for the big stage races. At 22, he had plenty of time to develop yet, too. Andy’s breakthrough had come at the 2007 Giro d’Italia, where he’d finished second, and my former directeur sportif, Cyrille Guimard, described him as “a young Laurent Fignon”.
Monaco was the setting for the start of the 2009 Tour de France. We were setting all our hopes on the Schleck brothers for the overall, while Fabian was the man to try to get us the yellow jersey early on in the race. The Swiss rider was used to having responsibility heaped onto his shoulders and didn’t mind the pressure at all. He was a Classics specialist whose wins included Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo, and he was almost unbeatable when it came to time trials – a discipline in which he had won multiple world titles and was reigning Olympic champion. He did it again in Monaco, too, winning the 15km opening time trial and taking the race’s first yellow jersey. From then on, it was all about us holding onto it for as long as possible without using up too much energy, which we did right up until the sixth stage.
Our team was made up of a number of humble and hard-working domestiques who were there to help our leaders in any way they could. It was a role I knew well from my time riding for Fignon.
Nicki Sørensen was one of them. He knew his role on the team and commanded a lot of respect from the other riders for the way he rode. It meant there wasn’t a rider on the team who could begrudge Nicki taking his chance at the Tour, which he got on stage 12 to Vittel. All day, a number of riders had tried and failed to get away, but eventually one break stuck. Nicki, though, sat back in the peloton, alert and ready to try something unexpected. At the right moment, he attacked and bridged up to the breakaway group and, with 25km to go, attacked again, with only one other rider capable of following him. With 7km to go, he was in danger of being caught. “Now’s the time, Nicki!” I yelled at him. He went again, this time on his own, and held off the chasers to take the biggest win of his career. We were all thrilled for him. It was one of the most well-deserved wins anyone had seen in a while, and a number of Nicki’s team-mates had to fight back the tears.
Jens Voigt was another of our hard-working domestiques, but he also knew how to get into the right breakaways. He was a product of the former East Germany, always ready to work for others and always in a good mood. Jens got his chance on stage 16 and went away with the day’s main break. However, on one of the descents he lost concentration for just a fraction of a second and his bike slipped away from beneath him. He hit his head hard on the road, and I was one of the first on the scene. It didn’t look good: he had knocked himself unconscious, and there was a lot of blood. I supported his head in my hands, but he looked awful. The race doctor arrived and immediately called for an ambulance. Once I knew that he was in good hands, I went back to the team car and called BS, who was in the second car, further back. “Jens has crashed, and it’s serious,” I told him.
BS went to the hospital and stayed with the German, who was suffering with severe concussion, a fractured cheekbone and some nasty cuts and bruises all over. “There’s a chance that they might have to operate on his brain,” BS said.
Later, following the Tour, while Jens was still in hospital and facing yet another operation, I called him up. His contract was going to run out at the end of the season, and the day before the crash we’d been negotiating a new one but hadn’t been able to come to an agreement. With serious injuries, and at nearly 38 years old, the prospects of him getting a new contract perhaps weren’t that great. “Hey Bjarne! How are you?” he said, cheerfully, from his sick bed.
“Jens, I just wanted to say that you’ve got a contract for next year, no matter what,” I said, and wished him a speedy recovery.
At that year’s Tour, Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador were team-mates at Astana. The team’s hierarchy, though, hadn’t exactly been worked out, which was obvious enough for those of us not even on the team. Lance had said that he was going to ride for Contador, but it was clear that the American was only interested in his own chances at the race he’d decided to make a comeback at. Having won it seven times before, he wasn’t prepared to play second fiddle to the young Spaniard. We needed to use the unrest on the team to our advantage, but that required a willingness to take risks. Andy and Frank had begun to get a little tired of that phrase, which I was constantly using each time an opportunity presented itself.
“You need to be willing to take more risks,” I told them yet again. “We need to play Lance and Contador off against each other more and take advantage of their rivalry.”
But Frank always seemed to have a reason why we should wait until later on in the stage.
“But if we wait much longer, it’ll be too late,” I told him.
The mountain stage to Le Grand Bornand was the Tour’s “queen stage” that year, and we had to do something. I told the team as much that morning, and we made a plan. We went on the offensive almost immediately, and set a high tempo to try to wear down Armstrong. Sastre, now riding for Cervélo, went on the attack, and Andy, Frank, Contador and Andreas Klöden went with him. Lance was unable to follow. Carlos later had to let the others go, and Klöden was the next to fall off the pace. The other three came to the finish together, with Frank winning the stage from Contador.
Things changed again with the 40km time trial, where Armstrong was stronger than both of the brothers. It put the American back on the podium, with Frank 34 seconds down on him. Yet again, I had a word with Frank about how he had to take more risks if he wanted to stand on the podium in Paris. If he wanted to beat Armstrong on Mont Ventoux, then he couldn’t ride defensively or wait to see what the others did. “This is your last chance to do something,” I told him ahead of the Ventoux stage.
But Frank hadn’t changed. “Let’s just wait and see what happens,” he said.
Mont Ventoux – “the bald mountain”, as it was known – was perfect for attacks. Juan Manuel Garate and Tony Martin had attacked and were up the road, while the Astana team set a high tempo on the lower slopes of the climb in an effort to stop Frank and Andy attacking. Andy was able to attack anyway, hoping to make things difficult for Armstrong so that Frank could attack the American. But Frank didn’t have the legs, and while Andy went on ahead, with Contador sticking to his wheel, Armstrong pulled up alongside Frank to psyche him out. The American looked him straight in the eyes. “You can try to do whatever you like, but I’m going to be right here on your wheel,” Lance told him.
I watched from the car. “The battle’s over,” I thought. And it was. Frank didn’t try any more attacks.
In Paris, Alberto Contador stood on the top of the podium as the race winner, with Andy a step below him. It was a well-deserved second place; we’d dominated the race and had pushed for the victory all the way to the end.
On Saturday 1 August, while the Tour of Denmark was on, our garden at the house in Vejle had been decorated with flowers, the tables were positioned so as to be able to enjoy a view across the fjord, and everything was planned and in place. Our wedding day was to be a day we’d remember forever. Anne Dorthe looked amazing in her dress, and I could tell how happy she was. Even though we’d become a family, with three of our own children, it meant a lot to get married.
In September, Brian Nygaard asked me for a meeting. He’d been offered a job in the UK with the new British team, Sky. On the one hand I understood why he wanted to go, but on the other he was one of my closest and most trustworthy colleagues, and I’d miss him. I’d always be thankful for everything he’d done, but I’d really miss him as a person as we’d spent a lot of time together and had gone through some difficult times with the team, which had helped form a strong bond. We decided to announce that he was leaving at the start of October, and Brian promised that he would help find his replacement.
At the end of November, the team headed off for a survival camp on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura, and BS and I had a chat. “Maybe it’s time I called it a day,” BS told me. It was something that we’d both thought about. He’d been an important part of the team, and had really helped me grow as a person, but all good things come to an end, and 10 years of working together was a long time. During that time we’d had 10 very memorable training camps, and countless stressful and sometimes seemingly unresolvable tasks to face at the Tour de France, which we had nevertheless come away stronger from. A number of riders had also chosen to leave the team, but there were still more surprises to come before the year was out.
In December, Saxo Bank contacted me to let me know that the upcoming season would be their last sponsoring us. Their decision caused a lot of anxiety in the organisation. All the teams were having trouble attracting the big sponsors, and our staff had begun to notice how hard it was getting, too. They started to worry whether they’d still have a job in the future, or whether they should start considering other teams. I’d heard rumours about a new “super team”, due to be based out of Luxembourg. The rumours also said that the Schleck brothers, whose contracts with us ran out after the 2010 season, were going to be the team’s leaders. “What’s going on?” I asked Frank and Andy.
“We don’t know any more than you do,” they replied.
It wasn’t the end to 2009 that I’d hoped for.
At the start of March, Danish newspaper BT wrote:
According to Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, the Schleck brothers are considering starting their own team for next year. Furthermore, they could take Fabian Cancellara and directeur sportif Kim Andersen with them.
Andersen says he understands why people might be surprised that the Schlecks are not categorically denying that there could be something in the rumours.
“But at the same time, you have to remember that Frank and Andy are not married to Saxo Bank or Bjarne,” says Andersen. “Their contracts run out after this year, so they could be open to offers. Not that I’m saying they don’t want to stay. It’s tough for them, because they want to be open to everyone.”
And is Andersen married to Riis?
“No – it’s a professional environment. I’ve also had other offers in the past, but I’ve always chosen to stay. We’ll have to see what happens, though,” says Andersen, denying that he knows any more than he’s said.
A few days later, on Saturday 13 March, I read more disturbing rumours in the media – this time on the website Cyclingnews:
Former Astana team manager Marc Biver has admitted he is in talks with a Luxembourg company about creating a team around Frank and Andy Schleck for 2011.
It seems that Biver has been working on the idea of a Luxembourg team led by the Schlecks for some time, perhaps since as far back as November last year.
Having read all the rumours, I took out my laptop on a flight to Paris and wrote in my diary:
A crap day. One of those days when it isn’t great to work in cycling.
The newspapers are saying that Andy, Frank and Kim are trying to build their own team. They’ve told me themselves that they don’t know anything about it. But they’re not telling me everything – or am I just being too sensitive? But I want to know, so they should just tell me if there’s something going on.
I’m on a plane to Paris now, and Kim’s picking me up at Orly airport. I’m going to have to talk to him and find out whether I can trust him. He’s an important part of the team.
And if the rumours do turn out to be true, what will I do? It will be a catastrophe, and will no doubt cause a huge argument. What if I have to tell Kim to leave?
I hope that I can trust my employees, and that they stay loyal to me!
I hope that my gut feeling about it all is wrong. I really don’t want to be disappointed, or to have to take drastic action. I don’t want to have to face the consequences. Just how angry would I be? I’m not sure, but I know I’d be extremely disappointed.
When I talked to Kim, he told me that he’d been misquoted in BT. “That may be the case, but I don’t want to have to read anything like this at the moment,” I told him.
But I soon received more news about him and, needing to know what was going on, I spoke to him again. This time, he told me that he wanted to stay with the brothers. I then talked to Andy and Frank. “I just need to know what your first priority is,” I told them.
“You’re one of our options,” they replied.
“One of your options?” I said. “Have I become an option?”
“Yes,” they replied, but could tell it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“This is not how I want things to be between us,” I said, and asked again, “What is your first priority?”
“You are our first priority,” they said.
It was a bit of honesty and commitment that I wanted from them, but my gut feeling was that I wasn’t getting it.
One day, I received a call from someone I knew within cycling.
“Do you know what some of the people in your team are up to?” he asked, and filled me in on what he knew. The upshot of it was that I’d have to confront the brothers and Kim at the Tour of Switzerland.
But the Schleck boys beat me to it. “Now we’ve been contacted by the Luxembourg team,” they told me, “but we haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet. The team’s going ahead with or without us.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I asked them whether my former press officer, Brian Nygaard, was involved.
“He might be,” was all they’d say.
That was no great surprise, as I’d heard rumours that he was. Next, I talked to Kim. I’d heard that he was in fact already deeply involved with the new team and was already in the process of hiring staff – and had been talking to mine. I decided that he needed to stop working for us, with immediate effect.
“Okay,” he said, “I have to accept that.”
“It’s not even up for discussion,” I told him.
Kim was the one who had had responsibility for the Schlecks and their training, but was also one of my most important directeurs sportifs. But I could see no other way. In my eyes, what he’d been doing was disloyal and unacceptable. In any other business environment, he would have been dismissed long before this.
Fabian won the first stage and Frank won overall at the Tour of Switzerland. I was pleased with their form but was still worried about what was going on behind my back. I needed to keep my future plans for the team very close to my chest, and not talk out loud about our search for a new sponsor, or about the team roster for next season. If Frank and Andy were going to leave the team, and if they were going to take other riders with them, then I needed to think about who to replace them with.
Secretly, I’d been talking to Alberto Contador, who was considering changing teams, and was interested in joining us. It made negotiations with a new main sponsor even more important. We were in touch with a big company who were interested in becoming the sole main sponsor. While I waited on an answer from them, I went home to Denmark to celebrate Jesper having finished his school exams and to attend the national championships a week before the Tour. The arrangement was that the potential sponsor would be in touch just before the start of the Tour. If we could agree a deal, I’d be in a position to announce that the team would be continuing, and that everything was in place, which would take some pressure off during the Tour. I waited to hear back from them, as there were just some details that they wanted to check.
Finally, the call I’d been waiting for came through, but it wasn’t what we’d been hoping for. They weren’t going to sponsor us. So we had no new sponsor, the big names were on their way out of the team, and time was running out.
During the national championships, I tried to pretend that everything was okay, but that really wasn’t the case. The news that Kim had been fired had got out, and I was being asked what it all meant. The photographers circled me, waiting for a moment when I might look a bit down or make some kind of action that suggested “giving up”. The Luxembourg team with Kim as a directeur sportif and the Schlecks as its stars was clearly well on the way to being established. And then I got confirmation that Brian Nygaard was going to be involved, too. He was going to be the team manager.