Rolf Aldag and Allan Peiper (Image credit: Brecht Decaluwé)
While the majority of HTC riders and staff have already secured their futures for 2012, Rolf Aldag, a key member of the team's staff, has yet to decide his plans for the coming season. The German team director has a number of offers from cycling teams as well as an offer from a new sport, although he would not declare which.
Aldag has spent the last few weeks helping a number of HTC riders secure spots in new teams after the American team pulled the plug in August. One team that took a raft of HTC riders is Quick Step, a team that Aldag admitted had approached him for his services as well. Having already linked up with his colleague Brian Holm, the fit would be far more seamless than if he were to join another team.
I have a lot of plans in life, but I have to decide my future very soon. It’s a difficult decision because I do have good offers from good teams that could make sense, but I struggle because that job with HTC was very demanding and very intensive,” he told Cyclingnews.
“There are some more obvious solutions that would be relatively easy. They wear blue shirts and a lot of our guys have gone there. It’s an offer that’s exciting, and there is an interesting project with depth and there’s long term security.”
However the sticking block over his future seems to be over workload. Aldag was rarely out of the action at HTC, supporting the team at the majority, if not all, races. Although it helped the team rack up wins, it also put a huge drain on his personal life, and although cycling remains his passion he his keen to take a more manageable workload in any future job.
“I don’t know if I can do that again at that level and I don’t think I can ask my family to support me in that for another five years. It was 24 hours a day and I had maybe 10 days off in four years,” he said.
“I also don’t want to be involved in the politics of the sport. It gives me sleepless nights, and we have a lot of problems in the sport. I do like cycling but I do have another concrete offer from another sport.”
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Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
