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Analysis: Why T-Mobile fails

By Sebastian Moll
Published: Jun. 3, 2005
Paolo Savoldelli, Erik Zabel and Santiago Botero - of the three, only Zabel remains with T-Mobile
Paolo Savoldelli, Erik Zabel and Santiago Botero - of the three, only Zabel remains with T-Mobile
Photo: AFP (file photo)

T-Mobile’s reaction to Paolo Savoldelli’s victory in the 2005 Giro d’Italia was characteristic. Mario Kummer, Rudy Pevenage’s successor in the team car, proved to be a poor loser. “Savoldelli did 10 races for us in two years,” Kummer said. “We paid him his salary throughout his injuries, and when his contract was up, he didn’t even consider our new offer.”

Analysis

It was bad timing for the airing of dirty laundry – it would have been far more graceful to congratulate Savoldelli on his magnificent comeback and save the rest for later. And Kummer’s remarks also revealed a skewed vision of how the cycling world works. It seemed almost as though he felt Savoldelli had betrayed T-Mobile. But the team was contractually obligated to pay his salary while he was injured. And the fact that Savoldelli went looking for a new team after his contract was up – well, that’s simply what happens in professional sports.

There is, however, a kernel of truth in Kummer’s perception that he and T-Mobile had been cheated. Savoldelli saw no professional future for himself at T-Mobile; the team did not offer him an environment in which he could succeed. And the criticism implicit in Savoldelli’s decision to leave, magnified by the fact that he began to thrive the minute he left, must have hurt Kummer.

But Kummer and the rest of the T-Mobile staff would do good to face this sort of criticism instead of sulking about it. It has become evident over the years that riders do not flourish on T-Mobile, a team that is almost the antithesis of Bjarne Riis’s CSC. At CSC, riders reach their full potential, even discover potential they may not have guessed they had. At T-Mobile, riders’ performances often belie their capabilities.

Examples are plentiful. In a matter of months, Santiago Botero went from world champion and Tour contender to a rider who was regularly dropped from the peloton. Shortly after he left, he won the Tour de Romandie. Bobby Julich went from Tour contender to a very average middle-of-the-packer. He made it back to the top ranks of the sport – but only after he left T-Mobile. Kevin Livingston went from one of Lance Armstrong’s most important helpers to a rider who barely made T-Mobile’s Tour roster and ultimately lost his desire to race altogether.

T-Mobile hires scores of promising young Germans, but they become discouraged with their profession there and must be carefully re-motivated after they leave. David Kopp and Stefan Schumacher are the most recent examples, two riders who discovered that they can actually win races after years of being used as cannon fodder at T-Mobile. Olympic track champion Robert Bartko went back on the track after four frustrating years on the road with T-Mobile. And it took Steffen Wesemann almost 10 years with T-Mobile to convince the team that he is worth supporting in the spring classics.

And then there is Jan Ullrich. In 2003, the year with Bianchi, he rode his best Tour since his lone victory in 1997, despite a chaotic preparation. Challenging Armstrong without a team to speak of, not even knowing whether he would be permitted to compete until just weeks before the start, Ullrich gave a glimpse of what he is capable of for the first time in years. But when he returned to T-Mobile in 2004, everything was back to normal – Ullrich slumped in the winter, played catch-up in spring and performed well below his capabilities in July.

What is it about T-Mobile that causes riders to perform woefully and grow frustrated? The answer can be guessed at, if one looks at the feud between team founders Walter Godefroot and Rudy Pevenage. Before Ullrich was let go in 2002 following a drug-abuse scandal, Godefroot had repeatedly criticized Ullrich’s attitude in public. “Ullrich has to make a decision where he wants to go as a racer,” Godefroot told journalists. Godefroot wanted to know whether Ullrich truly wanted to win the Tour or was content simply to be a good racer.

That public criticism was in keeping with Godefroot’s style of leadership. Godefroot is an old-school, no-nonsense Flemish racer and does not fool around. He gives his riders money and demands results, and it’s none of his business how they live up to their part of the deal.

Pevenage, on the other hand, always thought that a rider like Ullrich needs to be coached, cared for and pampered. Hence, there was always a rift between the bad boss Godefroot and the good boss Pevenage and the riders. The divide proved unbridgeable when Pevenage and Ullrich left the team, a move for which Godefroot never forgave Pevenage.

The relationship between the two men had begun crumbling years earlier. Until 1997, Udo Bölts recalls, the team – then called Telekom - was a real team. Its core – Bölts, Aldag, Heppner, Christian Henn, Erik Zabel - represented the generation of young German riders that had grown from obscurity to become the first serious German pro team. The Tours won by Riis and Ullrich represented team triumphs as well as individual victories. Telekom’s men rode their hearts out and performed at 110 percent because to win the Tour was a reward for years of struggle – as late as 1995, only five Telekom riders were admitted to the Tour in a mixed squad.

After 1997, however things changed. The Telekom corporation, which was making the transition from a state-owned company into a multi-national public corporation, started putting big money into the team. Telekom marketers promoted Ullrich heavily, making him the mega-star that he is today in Germany, and raised public expectations that he would win the Tour every year.

Under the gun to deliver, Godefroot simply passed the pressure on. Like the corporation above him, he threw out money and expected success. Every year Telekom added big names to the roster, thinking that simply putting them aboard bikes would bring success in the Tour, while riders like Bölts, who had proven to be invaluable team riders, had to fear for their spots on the Tour team until sometimes just a week before the race was to begin.

The degree to which Telekom had become an impersonal machine became clear when Bölts and Heppner were let go in 2002. There was no appreciation for their merits, no offers of roles in management - just phone calls weeks before their contracts were up, telling them that they were too old and their contracts would not be renewed.

To be sure, the Discovery Channel and CSC are also success-oriented, for-profit companies. But their teams’ management understands the necessity of motivation and team-building, ideas that have become basic in the modern corporate world. Riis and Bruyneel are of a generation that is open to these things; for someone like Godefroot, they are more or less a waste of time. “I pay, they deliver” – that’s the bottom line for Godefroot. Pevenage understands that it’s not that simple, but he lacks the charisma, drive and intellect that Bruyneel and Riis exude.

As a consequence, T-Mobile has become highly dysfunctional. The clearest proof of this is that Pevenage is now a director hired by Ullrich and not the team, who speaks to Godefroot only through his successor, Kummer, and gets to sit in the team car only when Godefroot is not looking. Godefroot, meanwhile, finds himself saddled with Ullrich, the marketing front for T-Mobile, a rider who lacks drive and the desire to win. It almost seems as though Godefroot was happiest in 2003, when Ullrich was gone and he could run the team his way.

This situation seems unlikely to change soon. Godefroot’s no-nonsense philosophy - pay for performance and motivate through the media - is less leadership than a lack thereof. And there is no one else to fill the void – Pevenage is kept at arm’s length, Kummer is between all chairs and Ullrich certainly doesn’t step up. The result is an oppressive and paranoid atmosphere within the team. The motivation is wholly negative – riders are not rewarded for good performances, but they are punished for bad ones, and there is no team spirit. At team dinners, more often than not, there is an almost unbearable silence.

Only very calloused riders remain unaffected by this atmosphere. Erik Zabel has proven immune, as has Alexandre Vinokourov. But these are riders that would flourish anywhere – wholly independent, entities to themselves.

The rest take the good money and leave as soon as they can - unless they lose all interest in cycling or find themselves too old to land another ride.