Nils Politt’s tour experience comprised just a prologue and a stage when he did something that he was to repeat many times later: he attacked. It was the summer of 2017, Politt was there as a tour debutant for the now lost Katjuscha team, but he didn’t care about his inexperience. So he attacked on the third day and drove for a long time in the breakaway group, but 30 kilometers from the finish he was out of the field.
A good four years later, Politt, 27, is standing on the Boulevard des Arènres in the city of Nimes on Friday morning. Behind him is the mighty Palais de Justice, in front of him is the Village Depart, where the large escort of the tour gets in the mood for the new day every morning. The field is preparing for the start, and the man from the Bora Hansgrohe team looks mighty proud – only a few hundred meters from the place where he had a surprising coup the previous evening and he will be the first German on the 2021 tour won a stage.
In a way, this was the reward for years of effort. Politt still remembers his debut tour in 2017, “it almost worked out with the mountain jersey”. He has not counted the number of times he has tried outlier groups since then, at least it was very often. But it wasn’t enough for the really big triumph – until Thursday in Nimes, where he crossed the finish line alone as the last remaining member of a 13-man breakaway group. “Even in a few months, I won’t have realized that,” he says.
Politt, who was born in Cologne and lives nearby to this day, has stood for a long time alongside names such as Maximilian Schachmann and Emanuel Buchmann for a new generation of German cycling. Although he only managed one career win on the Germany tour until Thursday, he always showed qualities. He has been on the tour every year since 2017 and was mostly quite active there. He finished second or third in 21 races. And especially in 2019 he played a strong role in the important spring classics: fifth place on the Tour of Flanders, second place at Paris – Roubaix. He was “born for these races”, said his Katjuscha team boss at the time, Dirk Demol.
Coach Lorang says that Politt has increased by one or two percent in all areas
Indeed, not only because of his combative nature, but also because of his stature, Politt is made for escape attempts and one-day races: He combines a height of 1.92 meters, a touring combat weight of 82 kilos and very long legs. “Giraffe” is therefore his nickname in his Cologne training quintet, in which each member bears an animal name – including the sprinter André Greipel as “Gorilla”, who happened to be in the escape group with Politt on Thursday and gave his near neighbor a few tips how best to behave.
Dan Lorang has only known Politt since the beginning of this year. The Luxembourger is the head coach of the German Bora team, who Politt joined in the winter after four seasons at Katjuscha and ISN. Lorang does not fly to the tour until Sunday, and he watched the victory on TV. Politt really wanted to sign the team. “We knew that he is a driver who has a lot of speed and can pedal very high, but that he is also someone who can be very helpful to the team,” says Lorang on the phone.
But as fast and successful as Politt was before, he clearly improved again during his Bora days. One of the team’s standard exercises is that the drivers have to drive full throttle for a certain amount of time during training in order to compare the performance development. Sometimes a minute, sometimes five, ten, 20 or 60 – and in all categories, Politt has improved by one or two percent, says Lorang. Increased performance in cycling always creates questions in these times. The Luxembourger justifies this with the fact that Politt feels very comfortable in the team and with his personal trainer Hendrik Werner: “These are things that cannot be measured”, but they still played a major role. In addition, at 27, Politt is still in the middle of natural performance development, and he does not expect the peak for two or three years.
Politt argued similarly when he spoke about his first tour triumph in Nimes on Friday. “The team is totally behind me, it works very professionally, and that’s another big difference to the teams I’ve been with so far. In the end, that’s one or the other percent.”
Without Sagan’s exit, Politt would probably not have got the chance to win the day
Politt’s victory also showed what can still be important in a Tour stage win. Actually, such sections as the one to Nimes were intended for the captain Peter Sagan at Bora. But the Slovak couldn’t get going after an early fall – and got out on the Thursday before the stage. Politt might never have had a chance of winning the day if Sagan had stayed in the race. But this was all the more important for the team.
Because Bora has international sponsors, but for the Raublinger, the marketing is always about German names for the German core market – and that is difficult this year. Lennard Kämna, who won a stage in the tour last year, did without for health reasons, all-rounder Schachmann is preparing for the Olympic Games, and the team management left the sprinter Pascal Ackermann at home because his form wasn’t right. Climber Emanuel Buchmann, on the other hand, only managed to get the France ticket for a short time after his failed Giro appearance due to a fall and still struggled on the first mountain stages. There was only Politt left as a German stage aspirant.
He should now move up in the hierarchy – regardless of whether Sagan, who is being courted by other teams, stays or not. In view of his performance development, he will be one of the captains of the classics, says coach Lorang. The Cobblestone Battle of Roubaix – Politt’s declared favorite race – has been postponed to October in 2021 due to the Corona. That changes the structure of the training, and the team first has to see how Politt survives the tour. But the Cologne resident has already set his sights on it. “Roubaix is always marked in bold,” says Politt: “We’ll see. I still have a few years left.”
Only as many attempts as to the Tour stage victory are not possible on the cobblestones.