AOn May 1st there will be a cycling race in Frankfurt. Since 1962. Children’s races, junior races, U-23 races, amateur races, professional races. No one who is successful in German cycling has not had relevant experience with the annual mandatory event.
The older ones drove around the Henninger Tower. The boys are now at Eschborn-Frankfurt, after the race had changed names several times during years that threatened its existence due to the ongoing doping problem. Ralph Denk used to pedal in the school class on the Main.
At the age of 17, he knows it by heart, he finished fourth in the junior race in 1990. The spotlessly clean bikes, the colorful jerseys and the muscular legs of the pros, to see all of this up close on the Hainer Weg, “back then it was something really big, something with a wow factor,” he says. “That inspired me.”
Miserable first third of the season
As team boss of the only German world tour team Bora-hansgrohe, the Upper Bavarian has recently experienced two victories in his colors in front of the Alte Oper. Pascal Ackermann from the Palatinate won in 2019, and Sam Bennett from Ireland last year – each in a sprint. Bennett crowned a strong spring for his team at the most important one-day race in Germany. At the same time that weekend, Bora professionals in Switzerland achieved a double success in the queen stage and overall victory in the Tour de Romandie.
You can only dream of that at Bora, who can look back on a miserable first third of the season. The team has won four victories so far in 2023, and at best they drove inconspicuously in the big races. Infections and injuries bothered some professionals.
You can still compensate for the absence of classic helpers, says Denk, but if drivers like Bennett, Schachmann or Bob Jungels get caught, i.e. professionals “who are well paid to win victories, that’s no longer possible”.
So it was up to the team management to repeatedly deviate from the plan when filling the races and to fill the squads with drivers who were actually not intended for this. Which in turn disturbed their mold construction.
“It’s a vicious circle,” says Jens Zemke. He is one of the sporting directors, was born in Frankfurt and was there on May 1st almost 40 times in the racing saddle or in the team vehicle. “The team is distinguished by the fact that we remain calm. That there is no finger pointing between drivers, coaches and those responsible,” he says.
Team boss Ralph Denk and his team can defend their title at the Giro in Italy.
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Image: dpa
Maximilian Schachmann and Jungels were almost total failures during the classic season. Cologne’s Nils Politt cranked solidly, but without a real top result through the spring, Emanuel Buchmann, fourth at the Tour de France 2019, is returning to the peloton in Frankfurt after another Covid infection.
Bennett just undertook a complete rebuild after a health ailment. Which doesn’t exactly make the defending champion at Eschborn-Frankfurt a favorite for the 203.8-kilometer Taunusschleife. A win in front of a home crowd would be like balm for Bora. And tailwind for the grand tour season that starts next week. At the Giro d’Italia, after the greatest triumph in team history in 2022, the team will go into the three weeks of racing as the defending champions.
It wasn’t long ago that Denk announced that Bora-hansgrohe wanted to become number one. That was at the end of 2019, the team had just beaten the World Tour team ranking in second place. “It was a different time,” he says today.
Budgets “not set in stone”
The wheels in the industry have turned at breakneck speed. Especially when they are driven by super talents like Pogacar, Evenepoel, van der Poel or van Aert, who almost divided up the big races among themselves, while Bora’s star Peter Sagan was already beginning to decline.
Super talent supported by teams “whose budgets are not set in stone,” as Denk puts it. Be it because they are owned by investors, sponsors or even states. Whereas Denk, like only a few other World Tour teams, presides over an operating company, as was customary in the past.
“Our gap to the front has grown since then,” he says. A win after the hunt through the Taunus would help reduce it somewhat. And to save more good memories when cycling races take place in Frankfurt on May 1st.
