The book *Radsport-Regisseure* devotes a separate chapter to the relationship between high-profile cyclists and their sports directors. Several pages of the book are devoted to the harmonious partnership between Jan Ullrich and Rudy Pevenage, which was only brought to an end by the doping scandal. We present excerpts from the text here:
Sometimes the relationship between a sports director and a rider just doesn’t work out, but there are also many examples in the history of cycling where it has worked for years and led to great successes. Examples include Cyrille Guimard (born 1947) and Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon, José Miguel Echavarri (born 1947) and Miguel Indurain, Giuseppe Martinelli (born 1955) and Marco Pantani, Patrick Lefevere and Johan Museeuw and Tom Boonen, Jean-René Bernaudeau (born 1956) and Thomas Voeckler, Johan Bruyneel and Lance Armstrong, and so on. Some team managers and riders even remain loyal to one another for life or keep coming back together. What brings out the best in them? How does a team manager contribute to the development of talent, and how does he build a good relationship with his riders?
Cycling directors: the dream team of Pevenage & Ullrich
Another dream team that remained loyal to one another for years, through thick and thin: Rudy Pevenage (born in 1954) and Jan Ullrich. The Belgian Pevenage had already been working as a sporting director for a few years when he joined Team Deutsche Telekom in 1995, the predecessor of what would later become Team T-Mobile. There, during the Vuelta, he met a young German named Jan Ullrich, who was taking part in his first major stage race. In his biography *Nothing but the Truth*, Pevenage recalls that Ullrich’s debut did not go entirely smoothly. Even before the prologue in Zaragoza, Ullrich was suffering from an inflamed wisdom tooth. “There were even fears that Jan might have to withdraw early. But fortunately, Rudy managed to persuade a local dentist to reopen his surgery that evening for Jan. Jan was able to carry on until he was struck down by bronchitis, against which even Rudy was powerless,” writes biographer John van Ierland.
The connection between Pevenage and Ullrich actually began with a visit to the dentist. In 1996, the Belgian once again went out of his way for the prodigy, but this time it was about something that would prove decisive for both their careers: the Telekom team’s selection for the Tour. Ullrich had finished second in the Tour de Suisse that year, and Pevenage had seen for himself what the young man from Rostock was capable of. However, the first sporting director, Walter Godefroot, had no intention of taking Ullrich to France. Pevenage then rang Godefroot and convinced him that the talented Ullrich simply had to go, because he was certain to win a stage. Pevenage’s words proved prophetic: Ullrich won the time trial from Bordeaux to Saint-Émilion, beating the Spaniard Miguel Indurain by no less than 56 seconds over the 63.5-kilometre course. But that wasn’t all: Ullrich finished second in the general classification and proved invaluable to the team in another respect too – through his loyalty to team captain Bjarne Riis, who won the Tour.
Cycling directors: Tour victory as the highlight
A close bond developed between Pevenage and the young German rider, culminating in Ullrich’s Tour victory in 1997. In 2002, Ullrich hit rock bottom due to knee injuries and operations; he sought and found solace in alcohol, drugs and partying. When he tested positive for amphetamines during this period, the Telekom team had had enough. Ullrich was sent to the United States, where he was to regain his strength, both physically and mentally. He was not allowed to start the Tour anyway due to his positive doping test. Telekom brought big names such as Cadel Evans and Paolo Savoldelli on board. Pevenage realised that Ullrich had been replaced. “During the Tour de France, although I was forbidden to do so, I secretly got in touch with Jan and told him my impressions. He had to brace himself for the worst.”
A difficult period began for both Pevenage and Ullrich. They would have preferred to continue working together. Riis wanted Ullrich to join him at his Team CSC, but there was no room for Pevenage there, nor were the sponsorship funds sufficient to offer Ullrich a contract on the terms he wanted. At the end of December, Pevenage had to visit Ullrich on behalf of Telekom to collect the team bikes that he still owned. “During dinner, Jan suddenly turned to me and said: ‘Rudy, why don’t you come with me to Team Coast? I’ve signed a well-paid three-year contract, and there’s one ready for you too. Then we can stay together.’”
Pevenage and Ullrich only as a duo
Pevenage didn’t have to think twice and followed Ullrich to a team sponsored by a German jeans chain which, as it soon turned out, had run into financial difficulties. It wasn’t long before the UCI placed the team under administration and suspended it in its very first year due to outstanding payments and bounced cheques. The coach and his protégé were left without a team. So another solution had to be found. With the help of Jacques Hanegraaf, Felice Gimondi and the Grimaldi family – the new owners of the Bianchi bicycle brand – a new Bianchi team was set up around Ullrich.
In the meantime, Pevenage and Ullrich were hatching plans for a rematch against the magenta-coloured Telekom team. They tried everything possible, even resorting to illegal methods: they collaborated with the Spanish gynaecologist Eufemiano Fuentes, a specialist in EPO and blood doping. Pevenage: “I wanted to give Jan his rematch at any cost, to see him back at the top of his game; he had become more than just a protégé of mine, more like a prodigal son. […] Jan had to, and would, face the best of the best; only then should he take on Lance Armstrong and Team Telekom. He wanted to show them both. And so did I.”
The bond between the coach and the rider grew ever closer over the years, developing into a father-son relationship. Ullrich has always been grateful for Pevenage’s loyalty. At the end of 2003, Ullrich had to leave the Bianchi team because there was insufficient funding for a new contract. He returned to Telekom, whose cycling division had since been renamed T-Mobile Team, and insisted that he be allowed to bring his own staff with him, including Pevenage. However, because of his move to Team Coast at the time – which had come out of the blue and which Pevenage had only informed Godefroot of at the very last moment – he was no longer welcome there. Godefroot spoke out clearly against Pevenage. However, because Ullrich insisted on it, Pevenage was allowed to join the team as Ullrich’s personal support staff, though not as sporting director – a demotion that weighed heavily on Pevenage. “From that moment on, I was only allowed to speak to Jan, and even then only in his room. I was forbidden from having any contact with other riders on the team, and I was even asked to stay in a different hotel during the races. I never met Godefroot again, never spoke to him on the phone – nothing at all.”
The heyday of doping
Ullrich’s career coincided with the heyday of doping in elite sport, with EPO as the peloton’s substance of choice; blood doping was the method of choice once EPO became detectable in doping tests. In many sports at the time, it was considered impossible to compete without doping. Fuentes’s clients included not only professional cyclists, but also footballers and tennis players. Doping was nothing new; even before the 1990s, plenty was being swallowed and injected in the peloton, and stories of doping (and attempts to cover it up) are as old as cycling itself. What made the EPO era so worrying was its systemic nature: in some teams, doping was not limited to individual professionals but was part of the team’s strategy. Everyone involved covered for one another, lying and cheating until the truth no longer held any value – the so-called ‘omertà’, the internal code of silence, prevailed. Even the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), Hein Verbruggen, helped riders and teams cover up their doping offences in an attempt – as desperate as it was unsavoury – to protect the image of his sport.
In 2006, Ullrich won the time trial to Pontedera in the Giro d’Italia in commanding fashion. Pevenage was so delighted that old Jan had made a comeback that, in his enthusiasm, he rang Fuentes on his own mobile and sent him a text message; however, at that point, Fuentes’s phone was already being tapped by the police and the investigating authorities. That same month, the Guardia Civil launched Operación Puerto, a large-scale operation against Fuentes and his network. On 23 May 2006, more than 200 blood bags were found during a raid on Fuentes’ surgery in Madrid; Pevenage’s phone call provided further evidence of the gynaecologist’s activities. Fuentes was arrested that very same day, along with the sporting director of Liberty-Seguros, Manolo Saiz.
Cycling’s ‘directors’: the Fuentes raid and its aftermath
The rumour mill was in full swing, but officially nothing had happened yet. Although Hein Verbruggen asked Pevenage not to accompany Ullrich to the Tour, and suggested that Ullrich should claim he’d broken his arm in a crash, the pair nevertheless travelled to Strasbourg for the start of the Tour. “What Verbruggen was asking of me was out of the question. I couldn’t do it; it was a request I simply couldn’t comply with. […] Jan was in top form, and I was certain he would win this Tour, because for the first time we’d built up a whole team of eight support riders around him. I’d decided not to take Erik Zabel with us; we’d be riding solely for success in the general classification.”
The day before the Grand Départ, T-Mobile sacked Pevenage because of his links to Fuentes. The team also sent Ullrich home and later sacked him. Pevenage spoke out about this dark period in his life: “It ate away at me inside; I became depressed. Nobody rang me any more, nobody came to see me. I no longer belonged. Every now and then I’d ring Jan – in secret –; he always stood by me, but then we’d hear strange clicking noises on the line, and we’d have to laugh. Jan’s calls were being tapped; after all, I was calling from a phone box.”
Information about the book *Cycling Directors*:
Cycling Directors: From the Script by the Sports Directors, Lidewey van Noord
- ISBN: 978-3-667-13210-9
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 14.7 x 21.8 cm
- 1st edition 2026, Delius Klasing Verlag, 29.90 euros
Kristian Bauer
Editor
