Shut up Legs! by Voigt Jens

Author:Voigt, Jens [Voigt, Jens]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Hey! Why do you have to multiply the pain? Can’t you stitch one thing up after the other?”

Jens as seen by Chris Anker Sørensen (teammate with Voigt on CSC and Saxo Bank teams from 2007 to 2010):

I raced alongside Jens as a support rider for several Tours, but I will never forget his last Tour with the team in 2010. The race was in the Pyrénées, and Jens and I were assigned to cover the early attacks on the Col de Peyresourde. By the time we reached the summit, we were gapped just slightly, but then suddenly Jens crashed really hard.

Later, I heard that he was really banged up and that he managed to stay in the race by basically riding a junior-size bike for part of the stage. I could only imagine how exhausted he must be. We were rooming a lot that year in the Tour, and I was a bit nervous about what I would see when I got back to the room.

He was in the bathroom when I arrived, and all of a sudden I heard him scream, “Fuck! I can’t take it anymore!” I figured that he must be in a whole lot of pain, but then he came out of the bathroom yelling, “And now I have a stupid sunburn on my back! It’s too much!” I was speechless. His body was just filled with cuts and bruises, but Jens was mostly upset that—because the crash ripped his jersey open down his back—he now had a sunburn to contend with as well!

IF I HAD ONE WEAKNESS THROUGHOUT MY CAREER, IT WAS DESCENDING. And it resulted in two of my worst crashes. Early on in my career, I was okay with going down hills at 100 kilometers per hour with just a foam helmet on my head and a nylon jersey on my shoulders. I never dropped anybody, but I wasn’t getting dropped, either. Yet over the years, I struggled to follow the speed of the downhills.

And as the crashes accumulated, my descending got worse. My worst crash without a doubt came in the 2009 Tour de France in the Alps. I have seen the pictures of me lying there on the road in a fetal position with blood streaming down from my head. Normally, that means a broken skull! And if I had landed a little differently that day, I could have ended up in a wheelchair or, even worse, I could have lost my life. It could have been really, really bad, with very little hope.

Still today, it remains one of my most painful memories and something I hate to discuss. If you only knew how many times I’ve had to talk about it, how many times I’ve had to relive it.

We were in the Alps on the final climb of the day, the Saint Bernard Pass, before dropping into Bourg Saint Maurice for the finish. Andy Schleck was in the white jersey and planned to attack Alberto Contador, who was in yellow. So at the beginning of the day, we came up with a game plan.

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