Andreas Klöden
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| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Andreas Klöden |
| Nickname | Klödi |
| Date of birth | June 22, 1975 (age 31) |
| Country |  Germany |
| Height | 183 cm |
| Weight | 63 kg |
| Team information | |
| Current team | Astana Team |
| Discipline | Road |
| Role | Rider |
| Rider type | All-rounder |
| Professional team(s) | |
| 1998-2006 2007- |
T-Mobile Team Astana Team |
| Major wins | |
| Paris-Nice (2000) Vuelta al País Vasco (2000) |
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| Infobox last updated on: | |
| March 20, 2007 | |
Andreas Klöden, (born 22 June 1975 in Mittweida, Germany), is a professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTour Team Astana. His professional career began in 1998, two years after gaining the bronze medal in the U/23 World Time Trial Championships and winning two stages at the International Rheinland-Pfalz Rundfahrt in 1997. Critics claim that Klöden is born to be a cyclist, as he is a tall, lightly built racer with enough muscles to perform well in the general classifications. Downside seems to be that his body is very injury prone.
He then signed with Team Deutsche Telekom (now T-Mobile Team) in 1998, and in his first pro season he won the Niedersachsen Rundfahrt's General Classifications (GC) and the prologue of the Tour de Normandie. In 1999, he won a stage at the Portuguese race Tour of Algarve. But the first of his great seasons came in 2000, where after notching two important victories in the GC of Paris-Nice and Vuelta al País Vasco, he went on to obtain the bronze medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, after fellow German Jan Ullrich and Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov, two riders with whom he would spend several seasons in T-Mobile.
After that came three injury plagued seasons in which he gained no victories, until 2004, which saw his cycling rebirth. After winning the German National Road Racing Championships, continuing T-Mobile/Team Telekom's winning streak, which went back to Bernd Gröne's 1993 win of these Championships. Klöden held his great moment of form until the Tour de France, which began one week later. In that Tour, which he began as a domestique for Jan Ullrich, he revealed himself to be an important outsider and, despite not winning any stage, he ended second overall after taking second place from Italian Ivan Basso in the final time trial. Rumours had it that he was moving to Gerolsteiner or Illes Balears, but instead he stayed at T-Mobile.
In the 2005 season he has won a stage at the Bayern Rundfahrt. Klöden as well as teammates Ullrich and Vinokourov, were considered among the challengers for the 2005 Tour de France overall victory, with Jan Ullrich as the strongest bid. Klöden contributed to the team success of T-Mobile in the race that saw Jan Ullrich finish 3rd and Vinokourov finish 5th. On stage 8 in the Vosges Mountains, he attacked half way up the final climb of the day and eventually took the K.O.M. points, catching breakaway leader Pieter Weening right at the summit. On the way down to the finish in Geradmer, he lost the sprint finish in the closest Tour de France finish of all time - (9.6 millimeters or 0.0002 secs). Later, he withdrew from the Tour at stage 17 into Revel, having crashed during the 16th stage and fracturing a bone in his right wrist.
In the Tour of 2006, Klöden became one of the favorites for the overall victory when his friend Ullrich and rival Basso both did not start. Alexandre Vinokourov also did not participate in the tour because of his teammates doping scandal, which caused his team to fall below the minimum six riders to start. After somewhat weaker performances in the first mountain stages, Klöden was in good shape in the Alps, climbing in the overall ranking. Klöden was very strong in the closing time trial where he came second after his teammate Serhiy Honchar, climbing from the 4th to the 3rd place in the general classification in favour of Carlos Sastre. On stage 11 to the Pla D'Beret, Kloden was dropped by the leading group and lost about 1:30mins, which cost him dearly. On Stage 15, he performed strongly, dropping everyone, except Floyd Landis. On Stage 16, Kloden again performed well, finishing 4th on the stage, however on stage 17, he again cracked on the Col du Joux Plane, but recovered on the descent, mainly due to the help given to him by team-mate Patrik Sinkewitz.
On August 27, 2006, Klöden announced that he would ride for Team Astana in the 2007 season. [1]
[edit] Major achievements
- 2007
- 2006
- Regio Tour
- 3rd overall – Tour de France (could be promoted to 1st or 2nd due to drug tests)
- 2005
- Stage 5, Bayern Rundfahrt
- 2004
- Germany National Road Race Championship
- 2nd overall – Tour de France
- 2000
- Overall and Stage 5B, Vuelta al País Vasco
- Overall and Stage 7, Paris-Nice
- Stage 7, Peace Race
- Bronze Medal, Olympics Road Race
- 12th, Olympics Time Trial
- 1999
- Stage 3, Vuelta a Algarve
- 1998
- Overall and Stage 3A, Niedersachsen Rundfahrt
- Prologue, Tour de Normandie
[edit] External links
| Riders on Astana |
|---|
|
Igor Abakoumov | Assan Bazayev | Antonio Colóm | Koen de Kort | Thomas Frei | Maxim Gourov | Rene Haselbacher | Maxim Iglinsky | Sergei Ivanov | Benoît Joachim | Andrey Kashechkin | Aaron Kemps | Matthias Kessler | Andreas Klöden | Alexey Kolessov | Julien Mazet | Eddy Mazzoleni | Gennady Mikhaylov | Andrey Mizurov | Steve Morabito | Dimitry Murajev | Gregory Rast | José Antonio Redondo | Paolo Savoldelli | Michael Schär | Alexander Vinokourov | Sergey Yakovlev |
| Manager |
| Marc Biver |
