Frankfurt–Eschborn with John Degenkolb and a new route

When things get really serious this Monday, it could be painful for John Degenkolb. This is nothing new for a cyclist. The ability to suffer is a basic requirement. The distance to the finish line is getting smaller, the lactate shoots into the muscles, the legs hurt – and Degenkolb could also have a sore shoulder on Monday.

He is still feeling the consequences of his accident when he fell three weeks ago in what was probably the toughest one-day race Paris-Roubaix on a cobblestone passage in northern France while he was in a promising position. “It doesn’t bother me in normal cycling and in everyday life,” says the 34-year-old from Team DSM: “The pain is only not completely gone if you have to pull the handlebars enormously and yank in the sprint.”

“The challenge is enormous”

Pull and tear? It has at least become a little more likely that at the end of the 200 kilometers of the Eschborn-Frankfurt classic bike race in downtown Frankfurt it will no longer happen in the usual form of the past few years, when the race always ended with a mass sprint.

The most exciting of all questions before May 1st: How does the new profile with 3000 meters of altitude and a second Feldberg crossing from the more difficult south-western side affect the race? “The challenge is enormous,” says Degenkolb: “A lot depends on how the race is organized by the other teams.”

Degenkolb, whom the Hatz will take through his home in Oberursel, won the classic in 2011. Since then he has finished second three times and third once. The new route does not benefit his type of driver. “If the second Feldberg crossing is really rumbled, it will be difficult to keep up.” That also applies to drivers like Alexander Kristoff, four-time winner, or Jasper Philipsen, who won the race in 2021 and this year at Paris-Roubaix finished second.

In any case, attacks on the Feldberg are to be expected – perhaps also from other regional greats such as Jason Osborne or Jonasrutsch, for whom the route profile seems to be tailored. “If an excellent group of mountaineers forms and works well together, it will be difficult to bring them back,” says Degenkolb, looking at the last flat section, which has now become shorter: “But it’s not impossible.”

“Not everyone has understood yet”

Lots of subjunctive ahead of the only race in Germany that has top-flight WorldTour status. “That’s exactly what we want,” says Fabian Wegmann, the sporting director. More action, more uncertainties. He is “very satisfied” with the squad sent by the teams. The ten World Tour and nine Pro teams have up to 24 hours before the start of the race to register their teams. A peloton is already emerging that is colorfully mixed. The German team Bora-hansgrohe sends last year’s winner Sam Bennett, a classic sprinter.

And, as it turns out, also Emanuel Buchmann, who recently had to cancel his start at the Tour de Romandie due to illness. He’s one of the best climbers, about 30 pounds lighter than Bennett. There are teams that don’t have any sprinters and will “make it really difficult” for the others. And again those who rely on the boys with the thick thighs. “I have a bit of the feeling that not everyone has understood and underestimates what is to come,” says Wegmann.

Hardly anyone can judge what the drivers can expect better than John Degenkolb. During his training sessions he is often out and about in the Taunus. He knows the Feldberg from numerous ascents. Degenkolb is quite mountainous and currently in a strong condition. At Paris-Roubaix, the 34-year-old resembled an earlier version of himself in the way he acted in the front group.

He has checked off the fact that the race ended in seventh place after his crash. “No one can know what would have been in it,” says Degenkolb: “Being able to drive in such a mega final was an enormous boost in motivation, which brought me back to the front and helped me to cope with the disappointment.” Degenkolb spent a week with his family in Mallorca to give your body a break and clear your head. After five days he got back on his bike.

“I was so sick”

He is “absolutely satisfied” with the shape curve of the spring. Degenkolb attributes the fact that he is in such a good mood to a changed approach. Instead of preparing for the classics season with high-altitude training camps and fewer races like in 2021, his team had him drive two Grand Tours in 2022 “to gain strength”. At the Tour de France in July and the Vuelta a España in August and September, he was “completely suffering,” says Degenkolb: “But for the classics, that definitely brought me forward.”

When you think of Degenkolb, the images of his successes at the Paris-Roubaix and Milan-Sanremo monuments in 2015 or his stage victories in the three major country tours that made him a great one spring to mind. The fact that he also won Eschborn-Frankfurt in 2011 was “forever” by cycling standards, says Degenkolb, “it feels like another century”. Since then, nothing has changed in terms of alignment: “When you start as a local hero, you want to win.”

The weather forecast is now better than at the beginning of the week. Hardly any risk of precipitation. “That would be good for the event and the spectators,” says Degenkolb, who would have nothing against a shower. Someone like him, whose favorite race takes him through the “Hell of the North” over 54 kilometers of sometimes brutal cobblestones, where the match is thrown in the face of the drivers in bad weather conditions, cannot be stopped by a tug in his shoulder when there is a sprint. And certainly not from the rain.