Henk Vogels - one of the tough men of the peloton
After two seasons on the European ProTour with Belgium’s Davitamon-Lotto squad, former Australian national champion Henk Vogels returned to the U.S. peloton in 2007 with his new Toyota-United Team, bringing to the table a wealth of both domestic and international experience to share with his new teammates. Vogels made an immediate impact, serving as Ivan Dominguez’s top lead-out man and helping Dominguez to his most successful season ever. But Vogels’ season was interrupted in July when he broke the glenoid bone in his shoulder during a collision with a metal post at the Infineon Cougar Mountain Classic Criterium.
Vogels is one of Australia’s great classics riders and is one of the world’s best lead out men. He embraced this role during the past two seasons, leading Davitamon-Lotto teammate Robbie McEwen to multiple wins, including six at the Giro D’Italia.
I sat down with Henk Vogels just before the start of the Amgen Tour of California to pick his brains on the art of the sprint, and his role on his team.
Lyne Lamoureux: What’s the plan for the team for the Tour of California?
Henk Vogels:Last year, we had some aspirations with Justin England and Chris Baldwin for the overall, this year we’ve come in focusing mainly on sprint stages with Dominique Rollin, Hilton Clarke and Ivan Dominguez. I’ll kind of be directing those guys, directing the traffic on the road.. But we’ve also got Ben Day who’s a very good time trialist so we’ll be seeing how he’s going, he’s got good form but mainly, yeah mainly just to pull a stage win out here would be fantastic for us.
LL: The team showed good form at the race at the Tour of Monterrey in Mexico…
HV: We won four stages, and I was second overall. That wasn’t anywhere near the level that we are here, I mean these are the best bike riders in the world so we’ve done our work, I’ve been in Australia with all the Australians, that’s why most of the Australians are here because they’ve had the advantage of the summer and racing in our National Championship and some crits so yeah…
LL: Has your role on the team changed, with all these new, young sprinters coming in?
HV: Really, just trying to mesh the guys, I’m the lead out guy, I’m the guy that makes the decision on the road when it has to be made straight away because I’ve been doing it for so long, these guys all know what to do I don’t really need to tell them, but if they are decisions that need to be made, I’m kind of the directeur on the road. So just trying to get the boys organized and as well I can win some bike races as well, so yeah that’s mainly my role.
LL: How does a good lead out work?
HV: The main thing, if you have a gun sprinter. There are two different ways of working it, there are like the seven guys working for the sprinter riding the last 5 to 10 k at the front to keep him our of trouble or you have the sprinter who is someone like Robbie McEwen or Ivan Dominguez who prefers just to sit in with the other sprinters and just use his raw speed and use the peloton. Ivan, last year, he won most of his races when he had the whole team riding for him in the finale, but in races like this when you have the team of Rabobank with Freire, High Road with Cavendish, and Quick Step with Boonen, it doesn’t really much sense to get the whole team going on the front for our sprinter. So, my role is really to see how Ivan’s going and whether he wants to have the leadout which we don’t know yet, we’ll see. We’ll sit down and talk about that tonight and get him in the right position with between 8 and 600 meters to go and go from there. But it’s really kind of an art to get that person in the right position whether that be on Tom Boonen’s wheel or whether he wants to head out early so it’s a lot of communication in the race so the main thing is to be in position to leadout or just put in position so he can go out with the other sprinters.
LL: With these new guys on the team, how hard is it to integrate them in the lead out, especially with only one race behind you?
HV: Well Hilton Clarke is really young but very, very experienced and very crafty, I don’t need to tell him what to do, he’ll slot in there very easy but Dominique Rollin is quite new but also won none races last year so he’s not a chump so it’s just a matter of getting those guys to go out at the right time and when and where.
LL: How do you communicate the ‘when and where’ then?
HV: Radios or normally I just scream. I’ll be screaming at the guys, go, stop or stay here, go now, it’s pretty easy, it’s not that hard.
LL: A lot of people can’t do it, so how do you learn this stuff?
HV: 2 Tour de Frances, 2 Giros, 2 Vueltas, 15 years in the pro peloton…. it’s experience.
LL: You’ve been in teams with Robbie McEwen, Steels, Van Petegem, how different are each of these sprinters?
HV: Every sprinter is so different, Cipollini was just raw power with an incredible eight-man lead out, whereas McEwen only needed one or two guys just to surf around the outside and put him on the sprinters’ wheels and then he’d go from there because he was the fastest, no where near by any means the strongest so it’s just a matter of who that sprinter is and you just have to rely on how he feels and how he wants to do his sprint.
LL: Do you have to adapt your style depending on the sprinter?
HV: Yes, absolutely, like I said, you’re either doing him full scale leadout where you’re hitting out with him on your wheel with 650 to go, or whether he just wants to be put strategically onto another sprinter so it all depends on the day too, he may not want the whole team to have that responsibility and just follow the sprinters and see how it goes so it’s up to him.
LL: So do you prefer either way?
HV: No. whatever.
LL: I’ve noticed that the team doesn’t typicall sweep behind Ivan, why is that?
HV: This year, I think we are probably going to try to do that at some stage but, the perfect guy for that is Hilton Clarke, he’s fantastic for that, you’ll never get rid of him, he’s very, very good, but yeah, I mean I think you’re just wasting somebody you know, I like the idea of it, I’d rather have someone in front of him with a little bit more punch just in case something happens.
LL: What do you need to have to be the last leadout guy?
HV: You have to have that strength to keep him there and that explosivity. I’m not really the kind of an explosive guy but I can hold high speed for quite a long time, where Domniguez is 5k an hour faster than me so, you know that’s perfect to have somewhere there to keep him there for as long as he can so. I’m more of a stronger sprinter not really the quickest guy.
LL: What can teams do to play havoc with a leadout train, given all the sprinters teams at the Tour of California this year?
HV: Yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the final there because you’re going to have Rabobank, High Road, all wanting to be in the first in the last corner but it’s all a matter of how strong the teams are, if they’re not quick enough, they’re just going to be taken over, and the teams just move over on them and that’s it. But I honestly think the bigger teams are just going to put four guys, two or three guys each and they’re just going to ride high tempo and then do the sprint, you never know, you’ll see on the first day.
LL: Which sprinters might cause a surprise?
HV: There’s a guy in Gerolsteiner who’s very good, born in Australia but he’s German but I can’t remember his name (ed Heinrich Haussler) Aaron Kemps from Astana, he’s shown fantastic form in Australia this past summer, he’s one to watch….
LL: Do you see yourself as a mentor on the team, to try and teach what you know?
HV: I try and take the younger guys a little bit, teach them some etiquette on the bike and off the bike, what I mean by etiquette is the way we do things, especially the young guys like Dom Rollin who’s got such a huge future, young Jonny Clarke who’s also new on the team. Most of the other guys know exactly what to do, they’ve been pros for ling enough. There’s a couple of new guys, like I said, Jonny and Dominique, they need some direction, I think Dominique Rollin can win a lot more races in his career so he’s just incredibly strong so if you can harness that… yeah I mean, I don’t say it out loud but I kind of try and help them.
LL: Have you thought about how many more years and retirement?
HV: I’ve thought about retirement a lot in the last twelve months, like I said to a couple of people, the day I’m just struggling to be in the peloton is the day I stop. When I’m struggling but still up for the win with my teammates and helping my teammates win then I’ll keep cycling. But I’m enjoying myself, the day I stop, the day I’m not enjoying myself, then it’s over.
LL: So where you asking yourself these questions particularly after your crash last year?
HV: Yeah, I was on a two-year contract with Toyota and it happened mid way through the first year of the two year contract so it never entered my mind to stop. If it had happened this year in July, that’s another scenario. I try not to think about that too much. I want to try and go out on my own terms after a fifteen year career, we’ll see.
LL: You’re still having fun right?
HV: Well that’s right, as long as you’re having fun and you’re making some money… well a living, there are not too many bike riders making a lot of money. The climate in Europe is not real good, I’m happy to be here, I don’t miss Europe.
LL: Not at all?
HV: Actually, I lie, I love the Classics and I like seeing the sprint stages at the Giro and the Tour but the rest of it, I have no passion for it at all.
LL: What is your schedule after Tour of California?
HV: I’m actually having a layoff, I’m not doing Georgia and Redlands at the moment, but one our riders, Ivan Stevic, is still out with a knee injury so he may not be doing those races so they may slot me in for that. But, I’m doing every single race between Tour of the Gila pretty much and Vegas, but I have an 8-week layoff after California because Len wanted me to be good for Tour of California so that’s what I did. I did some trips down to Australia to get some conditioning after having a 3 months off in the middle of the season because I knew that I wouldn’t be any good if I didn’t race. So that’s why I did some racing in Australia and then went to Mexico.
LL: How much of a havoc does it play having Tour of California so early in the season?
HV: It sucks actually, but in another way if it was late in the year you might not get the riders that you get here. Because the riders like to start the season in a place like California where the racing isn’t that hard; this year for some stupid reason they pout MT Hamilton in and I don’t understand the reason for that, I don’t understand why they did that, no rider really wants to go up climbs that long in early February but that’s the way it goes.
LL: When did you start training for this race?
HV: October. But I did have three months off last year, July, August and September, no nothing, so from there, that’s a decent layoff.
LL: Are there any races that you particularly like in the US?
HV: Philadelphia. I really enjoy the later-season criteriums, like the Charlotte criterium, even though I’ve never done Elk Grove, I heard it’s fantastic. Philly Week, in general is something I target every year when I’m here. Georgia normally was a highlight but I’m not doing that this year just because I’m doing of California, some of the Americans are going to fill in for that race. US Open was fantastic last year.
LL: Even with the snow ?
HV: Yeah, I felt it made it even better, it was cold at the start but it really was a good race.
LL: What made it so good?
HV: It was three hours on TV, it was like a really hard finish, you had that little cobble hill finish which gave it some character, you get tired of just riding around in circles, it’s nice to get something different in the peloton.
LL: What do you think is the state of cycling in the US?
HV: I think it’s extremely healthy, I think the new races in Colorado and Utah, I think that’s going to make it much bigger this year, specially with Medalist Sports, I think they put on a great event. I think it’s great, there’s nothing like that in Australia.
LL: Is that why there are so many Australian riders here?
HV: Probably. I came from Europe, I was probably the first guy to come here in 2000, now I just bring a whole trail of them, sorry about that.
LL: What’s the mood on the team, with new riders, new DS this year?
HV: It’s definitely different, but the great thing is that the core group stayed with Ivan (Dominguez), Chris Wherry, (Chris) Baldwin, Justin (England), myself, a couple of other Aussie guys, Caleb, Sean, Heath, I could go on. We all get along really well, we really do, and I just don’t say that because I’m on the team. I totally wouldn’t say that if it was like… when I was with Credit Agricole, it was just a piece of shit team, it was great riders, it was a great organization, but hanging out with the riders was absolutely nothing. It’s totally different here so all the boys really enjoy going out to races and being with the boys. It’s fun.
LL: What makes it so good?
HV: I think it’s just the mix of guys, we have the funny guys, the jokers, different nationalities too, and we’re all English too so it’s kind of nice but I think it’s just the mix of guys, a bit of chemistry. It sounds cliché but it actually is right.
Photo c. Larry Rosa Photography
