::: Out of the Shadows

Banned for eight months after the 1998 Festina scandal Alex Zülle has bounced back to be the number one challenger to Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France. He talks to Andy Hood about getting older, and getting even.

Grenoble, France - The opening prologue of the 52nd Criterium du Dauphiné Libéré in early June starts out juts like so many others Switzerland’s Alex Zülle has raced in his long career. Flat and smooth for the first kilometre, Zülle is cranking out the horsepower from his sleek lean frame. But, like Zülle’s career in general over the past few seasons, however, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. At 1.5 kms into the 3.1 km course, the route serpentines up a steep bluff towards the “bastille”, a great place to build a fortress, but a horrible place to race a bike.
The pitch taps out at 17 percent. Heat radiates off the sticky tarmac as thousands of fans close in on Zülle, urging him on. Zülle doesn’t notice. He throws everything into the climb, arching his long, lean body into the pedals. The switchbacks are so steep - some as steep as 21 percent - that weaker riders must weave back and forth to get up and around the corners. Crwaling behind Zülle, race drivers ustling VIPs up the road stall their cars.
Former professional Frederic Moncassin is behind the wheel of one, giving up his sprint fpr a pressed shirt and tie. Moncassin stalls his car as Zülle disappears around the corner. Fans recognize the popular former rider and start chanting. “Moncassin! Moncassin! Moncasin!” He pops the clutch, releases the parking brake and squeals the tires. He turns back to his charges and smiles. “I don’t miss this. I race motor cross now.” Moncassin cranks up the air conditioner while Zülle’s heart-rate monitor goes off the chart.
Ahead, Banesto’s directeur sportif yelps to Zülle in Spanish, “Venga, Alex! Venga” The Dauphiné Libéré is Zülle’s first major test of the season. He’s been the nowhere man so far in the 2000 season, racing a few Spanish races with his biggest success cmoning at the small-time races like the Vuelta Algarve in Portugal. At the same time, he’s been the biggst question mark mark among he Tour contenders. Which Zülle would show up at Futuroscope on July 1, the nervous Zülle who craks in the key moments, or the determined Zülle, capable of winning major races? Zülle is hoping to show his card in this short, intensive romp up to Grenoble’ bastille.
He throws everything into the final 200 metres and crosses the line in delirium, sweat pouring out of his body. Zülle doesn’t soak in the dramatic views of the Alps. He’s concerned with only one things: “What did Armstrong get?” Seconds later, the US Postal’s leader and Zülle’s Tour nemesis comes into view just as he looks up. Armstrong zooms across the tape six esconds faster than his Swiss rival. The bespectacled Zülle doesn’t say a thing; he simply turns back to the team car and buries his head in a towel.

For all the tense pressure of the Dauphiné’s opening prologue stage, it’s a veritable summer picnic 18 hours later for the start of the first stage of the race. It’s a warm summer day. Riders ralax, chat to one another, sihn autographs and talk to a few journos. The Dauphiné is serious business, but only during the race.
Whereas Zülle and the other riders will be living in a 24-hours pressure-cooker during the upcoming Tour de France, the week-long French race is one of those second-tier events that attract a competitive field but has a summer camp ambience. After his frenetic charge up to the bastille, the remainder of the Dauphiné is all about preparation for cycling’s biggest prize: the Tour de France. That’s what Zülle lives for. Perhaps more than any races in the peloton during these days. Zülle has enjoyed the elation that the highest realm of professional cycling has to offer, yet suffered its lowest lows.
A former time trial world champion and two-time Vuelta a Espana victor, Zülle has tasted from the sweet cup of success more than most riders. But he’s also tasted the bitter aftertaste of scandal and rejection. As a member of the scandal-poisoned 1998 Festina squad, Zülle suffered the ignominy of being locked in a prison cell, stripped of his clothes and his glasses, and saw his name drugged through the mud. No longer treated like a pampered cycling star, instead he was treated like a common criminal. The hyenas where after him. Unlike Richard Virenque, Zülle ‘fessed up and served his penance. Unlike Marco Pantani, he remained focused on what he was all about. Now Zülle rides for redemption. Not from the powers that put him down or for the adulation of the fans that prop him up, rather it’s for himself. Redemption can be found on the road, in the hard, long, lonely miles.
“When you sign a contract with the pros, you sign for the good and the bad. It’s important not to have any regrets. I am satisfied with what I have done”, says Zülle, finding shade on a curb with his Banesto teammates, waiting for the satrt bell to ring. Those who know Zülle well say he’s not bitter about the Festina affair, just wiser. He’s seen how the system can build up a rider, and then chew them up and spit them out. Gun-shy with the press, Zülle keeps his emotions in check, never revealing too much. He now prefers to let his racing do the talking.
“He never talks much about the past. He doesn’t sleep less for anything he did,” says his new directeur sportiv at Banesto, Jose Miguel Echevarri.
Others are quick to point to Zülle’s professionalism and hard work, attributes that helped him arrive at the top of the sport and endure its ugliest moments. “We have a very close relationship. We are together for many years, so we are very close still,” says Once’s directeur sportiv Maonolo Saiz. “He is a great rider and a good person. I have worked with many great riders in my career, but Alex is one of my favorites. It was always a pleasure to work with him.” But hard work and professionalism didn’t count for much when the French police came calling. During the Festina affair, Zülle perhaps felt most betrayed. Once was his first professional team, his only professinal experience before jumping ship to Festina. Züle signed with the Spanish Once squad in 1991. He learned Spanish, rented a home near Benidorm and flowered under the Iberian sun. He left Once for Festina, tempted away by a multi-million-dollar contract and the glitter surrounding the all-start team. Then Wily Voet was popped by French custom agents. The cat was out of the bag. Zülle was locked alone in a prison cell. But Zülle is as stoic as he is elusive. He admitted taking EPO. He admited that the team orchestrated doping. He served an eight-months ban from racing. He kept riding his bike, training, never letting others take cycling away from him. He came into the 1999 season with a new contract with Banesto. Back in Spain, he rediscovered his inspiration for cycling. “I am very calm. I am not stressed. I am very satisfied with my career. There are high points and there are low points,” he says. The most difficult point were during the Festina Affair. I din’t see how I could come back from this, but I am stronger because of it.”

Zülle rose out of the ashes of the Festina Affair with a new perspective on the sport. Although he was perhaps more jaded in some regards, he was still quick to find a reason the carry on. Comfortable speaking German, Spanish and Dutch, Zülle served his suspension for several month, from October 1998 to May 1999. Unlike Pantani, he never stopped training. He jumped right back on the bike and kept hammering away, racking up the miles. He came back after less than two months of competitive racing to be Armstrong’s toughest competitor in the 1999 Tour de France. “Zülle - always Zülle”, says Armstrong wearily in his book It’s Not About the Bike, of the rider who chased him to Paris, and refused to ever give up, even as Armstrong took a huge lead. All the same, second place was a just reward for a rider who, once again, was down on his luck. And Zülle knows, more than most, that, despite all the hard work and sacrifice, luck still plays a part in who wins and who doesn’t win a bike race.
He didn’t have much luck in last year’s Tour. In the second day of the three-week race, he gets caught up behind a crash on the Passage du Gois, a causeway that’s buried three feet under the Atlantic Ocean during the high tide. Slick as a greased pig, a huge group of riders go down on the slippery brick road. Clear off the front is Armstrong, plus a few handily placed US Postal teammates hammering the pace and dropping Zülle, like a bad habit. After finishing the stage, Zülle lamented: “Die Tour ist kaputt” - the Tour is finished.
“I never think about losing time in the Tour de France lst year. Armstrong demonstrated he is a great champion. I’m satisfied with my second place,” Zülle insists. “I finished second behind a great Indurain in 1995 and second behind a great Armstrong last year.” As Zülle admits himself, the time might not have made much of a difference. Armstrong won the opening prologue, a key mountain stage and both individual time trails. But had Zülle not lost the time at Passage du Gois, things could have been much dicier for Armstrong. Zülle only lost 58 seconds in the first time trial at stage nine and just 31 seconds on Armstrongs big win at Sestrières in stage 10. Luck usualy cuts both ways, but Armstrong had nothing but good luck in last year’s Tour. Later in the race, Zülle’s friends came out to help. In the epic six-climb day through the Pyrenees to Piau-Engaly on stage 15, Zülles former Once team-mate and four-year romm-mate Johan Bruyneel was encouraging him to hang on tough and secure second-place. Of course, it wasn’t all pure altruism. Bruyneel was behind the wheel as the directeur sportif of the US Postal team, playing poker against the toughest minds in the game. “At that point, Alex was an ally. Lance was on his own and Zülle was riding for the podium and the gap was pretty big between them. We had all the interest in cooperating, so we did, too,” Bruyneel says. “Zülle is a strong rider. He’s a three-week stage racer. He’s won the Tour of Spain twice and twice come second at the Tour de France. He is always a dangerous rider.”

For years, Zülle rode the Once way. Starting racing in February, hang the cleats up in October. Grind, grind and grind some more. Win races, any race, earn UCI points, flog away at anything that resembles a finish line. Refinement is not Once’s style. It’s all about dominating the season, not just one race, particularly when that one race is in hated France. Better to win important titles all year long than to stake the entire season on one race. If there’s one race to win, it’s the Vuelta a Espana. Zülle, of course, made his sponsor happy and won the Vuelta twice, notching victories in 1996 and 1997, revealing to the world once and for all that he is capable of winning a major three-week stage race.
Yet it’s the Tour that counts most to Zülle, and that’s part of the reason why he jumped ship to Festina in 1998. The team was focused on, perhaps obsessed with, the Tour. Five-time winner Miguel Indurain was gone, German Jan Ullrich was unproven and Festina, lead by Richard Virenque, smelled blood. Zülle has already his own taste of Tour success, finishing second overall to Indurain in 1995. By 1996, Zülle was the odds-on favorite to topple Indurain. Instead, it was Bjarne Riis who took that particular slice of Tour glory. After earning the yellow jersey in the opening prologue, Zülle’s chances dimmed in one of the modern Tour’s epic stages, the rainy, cold summit finish at Les Arc: Indurain cracked, Zülle crashed, Bruyneel landed in a tree and Riis powered on.
Before the Festina Affair blew up, the 1998 Tour had the makings of a classic showdown. Instead, it turned into a classic shakedown. Zülle and seven other teams bolted, leaving a weak field and a disillusioned sport. After giving one trembly TV interview, yet Zülle went into his own private world, refusing queries from the press. He spent his months in exile training alone or with close friends in Switzerland and Spain, wherever the weather was best. Zülle went into the 1999 Tour with only a few weeks of hard-core racing in his legs, and finished second overall for the second time in his career. Now, a full year on, with Banesto, Zülle is getting the full “Indurain” treatment. Focus on that bloody Frnech race, and focus on that only. That’s all that matters, especially for a mature rider with limited shelf-life like Zülle. “This is a different year to 1999. I haven’t raced as much in the beginning of the year. I don’t want to be racing in the key moments of the Tour de France and regret racing too hard, too early,” he says. “ I believe I can still win the Tour. I have been second twice, but I’ll be 32 years old this July.”
“I am now with Banesto and the Tour is a tradition for them. They had Miguel Indurain and Pedro Delgado - both Tour winners - so now I am under their program. They want to win the Tour again. That’s why I’m racing less in the spring than I was when I was with Once.” The shadows of Indurain’s and Delgado’s six Tour wins hangs heavy over the Banesto team, but not Zülle. Instead, the legacy is a protective umbrella. The team expects a lot, but they give the protection and nurturing that Zülle needs.
“It’s a good argument to make, because the facts speak for themselves. They - Banestoa - have won six Tours and I have two podiums, I have trained hard, riding for up to seven hours to simulate the conditions of a race. Banesto wants me to be their leader and I want to be ready,” Zülle says pragmatically. “These days, I approach the Tour differently. I am an older rider. I have been racing for nine years in my career. I’m under pressure to perform but I have less pressure in other ways. To win the Tour has been a dream of mine since I started racing. I’ll be 32 during this Tour,” he repeats, “so it’s now or never.” So where was he this spring? Instead of grinding away at every GP-this or Vuelta-that, Zülle hasn’t raced much at all this year. In fact, the Dauphiné was the first chance his rivals had to assess him. They were impressed. The final outcome of the Banesto system will be determined on July 23 in Paris. “This year we have come up with a different plan for Alex,” says Banesto team manager Echevarri. “Because the Vuelta is in fall, we have sacrificed the early part of the season, so this year he’s not at 100-percent in June, when he usually is already a the top. Alex is a “tio” who’s 32 years old, but he’s still very young in the head. He has tremendous class. He has the potential to win many more races. But he’s sometimes nervous when he sees things going bady, or when he thinks he can’t win.”

Like a man who’s been to the edge of the abyss and come back alive, Zülle is oddly serene. He know’s what he’s accomplished, yet he knows the Tour is the benchmark for all great riders. It’s like a star American quarterback who never won the Super Bowl. He’s still hungry, hungry despite his age, despite the miles and despite those past humiliations.
“I am very satisfied with my career,” he says. “Yes, I want to win the Tour. Every year it gets more difficult because younger riders are coming up every year. Look at Euskatel this year. It’s difficult but I want to continue. He says, ever the optimist. “Last year was last year. This year is a new season. All the world starts anew. Armstrong won last year so he starts with a lo of confidence, because he is the champion, but he still has to race - just like the rest of us.” Zülle turns 32 during the first week of the 2000 Tour. He hopes to have an even better party on the Champs Elysees, riding at the honorary position at the front of the peloton as the overal Tour leader as the race rolls into Paris. So how much more does he have in his legs? His boyish good looks defy his age. He remains a child at heart, though it’s a heart that’s been banged and bruised along the way. “I want to race for another two or three years more. But you never can say. I want to keep racing. I have the motivation and ambition to keep winning races… I always want more. I am a winner and I want to win more. I can continue and improve,” he says exuding positive thinking. “I can win and win.”
Zülle’s already proven that he’s ready to win. The Dauphiné Libéré this year acted as a preview to the Tour, with Mount Ventoux and the Col d’Izoard getting top billing. Up the sun-baked unrelenting gradient of Ventoux, deep in the heart of burnished Provence, Zülle finally dropped Armstrong and finished just four seconds behind overall Dauphiné winner Tyler Hamilton. “Muy satisfecho,” he gasps as he towels off the sweat at the summit. “ I am happy.”
That's all Alex Zülle has to say.