sabinedukes.com

Jens Voigt Wants to Kiss Me

When Jens Voigt crashed in yesterday’s tour stage, there was a collective gasp heard on the twittering and facebooking streams. OH NO Jens Crashed!!! No, not JENS!!

When I visited the Davis stop of the Tour of California this winter, I saw a big crowd of people over by what I thought was the Rock Racing bus. So, I wandered over to see what all the fuss was about. Well, the fuss was not about Rock Racing at all, it was for the Saxo Bank bus. Ahh, so the fuss is about the current world champ, Fabian Cancellara (Fabian wants to kiss me too by the way). But no. It was when Jens Voigt walked out and the crowd went wild (I only went a little wild, screaming something ridiculous in German to him) that I realized who the real rock star was.

And it struck me. Here in the US, where cycling is a niche sport and Lance fans are the norm, there was a crowd of fans standing in the rain outside a nondescript bus waiting for a German rider who doesn’t win the big tours.

So what was the allure? Why do we love Jens?

He’s a tough guy and lots of us fans love the tough guy. Like we used to love Johan Museeuw before he made his drug use more obvious than his hair plugs. But its something more than just being the tough guy.

Its that something inside him that makes him go hard in the front just because he can. That makes him attack just because it feels good. To make every single person in the peloton wince in pain, and then smile and giggle after the race.

I think we all just get the feeling that win, lose, job, doping scandals, television and popularity aside, he finds great joy in simply racing his bike.

Mwah!

Posted in: Race