Andreas Klöden

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Andreas Klöden

Personal information
Full name	Andreas Klöden
Nickname	Klödi
Date of birth	June 22, 1975 (1975-06-22) (age 32)
Country	Germany
Height	1.83 m (6 ft 0 in)
Weight	63 kg (140 lb/9.9 st)
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
National Road Race Champion (2004) Paris-Nice (2000) Vuelta al País Vasco (2000) Tirrenno-Adriatico (2007) Tour de Romandie (2008)
Infobox last updated on:
May 4, 2008

Andreas Klöden (born 22 June 1975 in Mittweida) is a German professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTour Team Astana. His major achievements include a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympic Games and the second place in the 2006 Tour de France. Fans claim that Klöden is born to be a cyclist, as he is a tall, lightly built racer with enough strength to place high in the overall classifications of major tours. Critics point out that he is prone to injury.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 1998-2006 (T-Mobile) 1.2 2007- (Team Astana) 2 Major achievements 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Biography

Klöden was born in Mittweide in 1975. Before he turned professional, he won the bronze medal in the U/23 World Time Trial Championships in 1996, and two stages at the International Rheinland-Pfalz Rundfahrt in 1997.

[edit] 1998-2006 (T-Mobile)

Klöden 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 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 on T-Mobile.

Medal record
Competitor for  Germany
Road bicycle racing
Olympic Games
Bronze	2000 Sydney	Road Race

After that came three injury plagued seasons in which he gained no victories. 2004 saw his cycling rebirth as he won the German National Road Racing Championships and so continued 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 Ullrich, he did not win any stage but finished second overall after taking second place from Italian Ivan Basso in the final time trial. Ullrich, whom Klöden was supposed to be supporting, finished fourth that year, the only time he finished outside the top three in the Tour de France. Finishing ahead of Ullrich brought Klöden international fame and rumours circulated that he was moving to Gerolsteiner or Illes Balears, where he would have led the team, but instead he stayed at T-Mobile with Ullrich.

In the 2005 season he 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 Ullrich as the strongest bid. Klöden contributed to the team success of T-Mobile in the race that saw 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 millimetres 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. Vinokourov also did not participate in the tour because of his teammates doping scandal, which caused his Astana team to fall below the minimum six riders to start. After somewhat weak 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 finished second after his teammate Serhiy Honchar, climbing from the 4th to the 3rd place in the general classification over 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 eventual overall winner 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, thanks mainly to the help given to him by team-mate Patrik Sinkewitz.

[edit] 2007- (Team Astana)

On August 27, 2006, Klöden announced that he would ride for Team Astana in the 2007 season, although Vinokourov was the team captain. ^[1] This announcement came as something of a surprise to the cycling community because Klöden, despite his talent and accomplishments, would almost certainly not be the leader of that team, which is organized around Alexandre Vinokourov. During the Tour, he rode well, but at one point of time he had to help Team Astana captain Vinokourov, so he lost a few minutes. Team Astana, and in effect Klöden, formally withdrew from the 2007 Tour de France on July 24th, when Vinokourov's doping test was found to be positive.^[2]

[edit] Major achievements

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Andreas Klöden's Official Website
• Andreas Klöden Fanpage
• Andreas Klöden Network

v • d • e Riders on Astana Assan Bazayev | Janez Brajkovič | Antonio Colom | Alberto Contador | Koen de Kort | Thomas Frei | Vladimir Gusev | René Haselbacher | Chris Horner | Maxim Iglinsky | Sergei Ivanov | Benoît Joachim | Aaron Kemps | Roman Kireyev | Andreas Klöden | Berik Kupeshov | Levi Leipheimer | Julien Mazet | Andrey Mizurov | Steve Morabito | Dimitry Murajev | Daniel Navarro | Benjamín Noval | Sérgio Paulinho | Grégory Rast | José Luis Rubiera | Michael Schär | Tomas Vaitkus | Serguei Yakovlev | Andrey Zeits | Manager: Johan Bruyneel

Persondata
NAME	Klöden, Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Kloden, Andreas ; Kloeden, Andreas
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Road bicycle racer
DATE OF BIRTH	1975-06-22
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mittweida, Germany
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH