Interesting to see Lothar Leder back on a Softride this year, especially after apparently telling Jurgen to get a real bike (IM Europe 2000 ?) and Softride's apparent financial woes.
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Re: Lothar on Softride [cankiwi]
[ In reply to ]
I find it interesting because I saw his bike at IMF and it was a rebadged walser. That is quite a statement about the quality of the softride.
Re: Lothar on Softride [konaby2008]
[ In reply to ]
This time his bike said "Curcuma....coming soon" or something to that effect.
Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle
Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle
Re: Lothar on Softride [gerard]
[ In reply to ]
Cucuma is a small bike shop in Germany selling cheap Taiwanese built aluminium frames. Both Leders lost the Cube sponsorship.
Frank
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain.
Re: Lothar on Softride [cankiwi]
[ In reply to ]
I believe he got paid a packet the first time he rode one a few years back but didn't sign a contract so Cervelo 'cut their lunch' and signed him!
Re: Lothar on Softride [triway]
[ In reply to ]
Actually, Lothar was the first pro I ever called. I called him in 1996, he said that unfortunately he had just signed a three year deal but that we definitely should stay in touch. so I caled him three years later and he got on a Cervelo. One of the nicest and most professional pros I've ever dealt with, especially when he felt he had received an offer he couldn't refuse.
Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle
Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle
Re: Lothar on Softride [gerard]
[ In reply to ]
Gerard, are you telling us that when you could not sign Leder in 1996, you then settled for our man Ian Fraser ? That is very cool. Ian is a great guy and runs the best tri store in Ottawa. There are pics of him on a Yellow P2 all over the store.
Dev
Dev
Re: Lothar on Softride [gerard]
[ In reply to ]
Like when he dumped Cervelo a few years later!
Re: Lothar on Softride [triway]
[ In reply to ]
It's interesting on how Gerard, which actually MADE THE DEAL, doesn't have complains from Lothar, but you do...
-
"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke
smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com
-
"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke
smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com
Re: Lothar on Softride [smartasscoach]
[ In reply to ]
I don't have any complaints? Who's post were you reading? All I said was that Lothar dumped Cervelo when he got an offer he couldn't refuse, good on him!
A couple of years ago, I wrote down some stuff regarding sponsorships and Lothar (I have edited about half of the text out, that will have to wait another 10 years):
SPONSORSHIPS
When Phil and I started Cervélo, our first customers were professional athletes. So when we started offering our bikes to the general public, it was only logical that we would remain heavily involved in athlete sponsoring. If you have a high-performance product, you need high-performance test riders and while Phil and I have been called a lot of things, professional athletes we’re not.
Over the years I have taken care of most sponsorships, and while people may think that this must be a nice part of the job, I tend to disagree. True enough, there are few things nicer than watching a major time trial where half of the top finishers are on Cervelo bikes or seeing Steve Larsen demolish the field on a P3, but there are also very few business situations that have drained me emotionally as much as sponsorships.
My all-time favorite lie is an agent who kept swearing up and down that he was only talking to Cervélo (The athlete is not interested in riding any other bike”). The problem was, the offer he sent me contained the phrase “Athlete will ride Brand X bicycles exclusively”, which for some reason led me to believe he has sent a very similar offer to Brand X, one of our main competitors.
After sharing this story with Dan Empfield he comes up with a funny story of his own: “We'd been in negotiation with a top-level pro for months. We'd invested many man-hours into this deal, many contract revisions with his agent. This was the deal that couldn't be made, and then it finally came together. Arabs and Israelis. It was that tough. But the deal got done. It was time to sign. He flew over for the "signing ceremony." The day came, and he didn't show. Nor did he show the next day. Nor the next. It seems that the people he was staying with -another pro triathlete and spouse- said, "Hey, why don't you talk to our bike sponsor first?" He signed the deal with that company, to the surprise of both us and his agent.”
Then suddenly I realize that we’re talking about the same athlete and the same agent. Empfield’s story confirms to me that the agent was talking to pretty much every company that could possibly be interested, and my story reveals to Empfield that the agent DID know about the deal with Brand X as he put together the offer himself (and by accident faxed it to me).
Not long after Hawaii 1996 I made a list of the athletes I would like to sponsor. We still didn’t have any money, but that didn’t stop me from putting Lothar Leder at the top of the list. My MO was rather simple: I looked up Lothar’s residence in the Road to Kona guide, called operator assistance in Germany and got his phone number. But it turned out to be impossible to get a hold of him. So I made the assumption that somebody like him would have a fax machine, but probably not a second line. I wrote a fax about what we could do for him, and tried to fax it to the same number. It went through. This was on a Friday, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I should expect a reply.
That evening I had some guests, and because they occupied my bedroom I slept in the room that I used as my office. In the middle of the night I am woken up by a ringing telephone (as was everybody else in the house, and they were not impressed), and without fully understanding yet that this is really the phone I pick up the receiver. At the same time as I see that the alarm clock reads 5am, a bewildered Lothar Leder is stuttering on the other side. The last thing he expected at this early hour in Canada is for somebody to pick up the phone, which is probably exactly the reason why he calls at this hour. It’s easier to leave a negative answer in a message than actually talk to somebody. I realize that it must look strange that I am picking up the phone at this hour (I want to pretend to be a decent size company, not some guy who sleeps in his office) so I start babbling about how the pool hours in Montreal really suck and I just got into the office to do some work before going home again. Yeah right. Unfortunately Lothar tells me that he found the fax interesting, but he has just signed with Bianchi for three years. We agree to be back in touch at the end of 1999.
In 1999, Lothar’s career seems a bit in a dip, with his infamous DQ in Kona. I have asked a friend of mine to talk to him at that race and put in a good word for Cervélo. He comes back with Lothar’s phone number and e-mail, and once I contact him things move along quite fast. Lothar doesn’t have an agent and takes care of his own sponsorships, which helps. There are a few other bike sponsors throwing around serious money, but he feels comfortable with our bikes and our company (he must have forgotten about our 5am phone conversation back in 1996) and we agree that he will ride a Cervélo for one year and then we’ll see what happens.
Lothar is the most professional athlete I have ever worked with. I have never seen him without the proper logos on his polo shirt, the Oakleys on his head or the Nikes on his feet. This may not seem like rocket science, but how often haven’t you seen a pro dressed like a bum. Or even worse, a world-class triathlete once e-mailed all his sponsors including Adidas a race report and award ceremony picture. His feet are in the foreground of the photo and clearly show him wearing Reeboks.
At the 2001 Eurobike when I meet Lothar, he mentions that he has been experiencing some discomfort in his lower back. Since it is only one month before Hawaii we decide to take a look at his position immediately. We’re lacking the proper tools, so in true MacGyver fashion we construct a plumb weight from a full can of Red Bull and the string of my Eurobike pass. The string is attached to the opening tab of the can, so any sudden movement will open the can. It's like juggling with a handgranade after taking the pin out, but luckily there's no explosion. I quickly find the problem, and make some rather large adjustments. The saddle goes six centimeters forward (thanks to the adjustable geometry this is just a simple flip of the seatpost head) and we adjust the aerobar risers. Thank God it works, and two weeks later he e-mails me that the problems have completely disappeared and he’s flying on the bike.
After Hawaii Lothar contacts me to say that a bike company has made him and his wife an offer he really can’t refuse. Now that he has started a family, he has to make sure his future is secure. At the same time he says he wants to make sure there are no hard feelings, and why would there be. Most athletes would never have let me know this was about to happen, they would simply have gone silent and I would have learned about it through the grapevine. The fact that he tells me in advance and values our relationship beyond the business of sponsorships means a lot to me.
With respect to him no longer riding a Cervélo, I am as sad about that as he is, even though after 1996 I decided that this stuff wasn’t worth crying over. It really doesn’t matter nearly as much anymore to our company if we sponsor an athlete, but still I find myself lying awake for a few nights. The reality is that we are a small company and our means are limited. We are honored when an athlete of Lothar’s caliber chooses to ride our bikes, and we are proud that he has used a Cervélo to rise to the top spot on the Profile Design Long Distance Triathlon Ranking in the past two years. And now that he moves on, we’ll still be cheering for him and wish him all the best. And the two Ironman Germany wins (both secured during the bike leg), the chats at Lava Java, the meetings at Eurobike (usually with a German camera crew in tow), the Red Bull plumb weight, they will all be part of the fond Cervélo memories once I sit down in the rocking chair fifty years from now.
Several years later, I am a guest in the Inside Triathlon media van out on the bike course at Ironman Hawaii. We come up to Lothar Leder so I roll down the window to shout some encouragements. As soon as he sees me he says hi. Then he points to his “Cube”-labeled bike and says: “Das ist ein Walser, kennst du den?” [That’s a Walser, do you now them?] And so we chat about bike technology for a little while, until I get too conscious of the fact that he is trying ot win this race and should probably concentrate on that, so I say goodbye and we drive on.
A few months after that I get a call from Kai Hundertmarck, an ex-cycling professional who is making the switch to Ironman racing. He would like to ride a Cervelo which of course we would gladly help him with but first I want to know why he is contacting us. His answer is simple: “Lothar Leder recommended Cervelo.” The guy is a class act.
Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle
SPONSORSHIPS
When Phil and I started Cervélo, our first customers were professional athletes. So when we started offering our bikes to the general public, it was only logical that we would remain heavily involved in athlete sponsoring. If you have a high-performance product, you need high-performance test riders and while Phil and I have been called a lot of things, professional athletes we’re not.
Over the years I have taken care of most sponsorships, and while people may think that this must be a nice part of the job, I tend to disagree. True enough, there are few things nicer than watching a major time trial where half of the top finishers are on Cervelo bikes or seeing Steve Larsen demolish the field on a P3, but there are also very few business situations that have drained me emotionally as much as sponsorships.
My all-time favorite lie is an agent who kept swearing up and down that he was only talking to Cervélo (The athlete is not interested in riding any other bike”). The problem was, the offer he sent me contained the phrase “Athlete will ride Brand X bicycles exclusively”, which for some reason led me to believe he has sent a very similar offer to Brand X, one of our main competitors.
After sharing this story with Dan Empfield he comes up with a funny story of his own: “We'd been in negotiation with a top-level pro for months. We'd invested many man-hours into this deal, many contract revisions with his agent. This was the deal that couldn't be made, and then it finally came together. Arabs and Israelis. It was that tough. But the deal got done. It was time to sign. He flew over for the "signing ceremony." The day came, and he didn't show. Nor did he show the next day. Nor the next. It seems that the people he was staying with -another pro triathlete and spouse- said, "Hey, why don't you talk to our bike sponsor first?" He signed the deal with that company, to the surprise of both us and his agent.”
Then suddenly I realize that we’re talking about the same athlete and the same agent. Empfield’s story confirms to me that the agent was talking to pretty much every company that could possibly be interested, and my story reveals to Empfield that the agent DID know about the deal with Brand X as he put together the offer himself (and by accident faxed it to me).
Not long after Hawaii 1996 I made a list of the athletes I would like to sponsor. We still didn’t have any money, but that didn’t stop me from putting Lothar Leder at the top of the list. My MO was rather simple: I looked up Lothar’s residence in the Road to Kona guide, called operator assistance in Germany and got his phone number. But it turned out to be impossible to get a hold of him. So I made the assumption that somebody like him would have a fax machine, but probably not a second line. I wrote a fax about what we could do for him, and tried to fax it to the same number. It went through. This was on a Friday, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I should expect a reply.
That evening I had some guests, and because they occupied my bedroom I slept in the room that I used as my office. In the middle of the night I am woken up by a ringing telephone (as was everybody else in the house, and they were not impressed), and without fully understanding yet that this is really the phone I pick up the receiver. At the same time as I see that the alarm clock reads 5am, a bewildered Lothar Leder is stuttering on the other side. The last thing he expected at this early hour in Canada is for somebody to pick up the phone, which is probably exactly the reason why he calls at this hour. It’s easier to leave a negative answer in a message than actually talk to somebody. I realize that it must look strange that I am picking up the phone at this hour (I want to pretend to be a decent size company, not some guy who sleeps in his office) so I start babbling about how the pool hours in Montreal really suck and I just got into the office to do some work before going home again. Yeah right. Unfortunately Lothar tells me that he found the fax interesting, but he has just signed with Bianchi for three years. We agree to be back in touch at the end of 1999.
In 1999, Lothar’s career seems a bit in a dip, with his infamous DQ in Kona. I have asked a friend of mine to talk to him at that race and put in a good word for Cervélo. He comes back with Lothar’s phone number and e-mail, and once I contact him things move along quite fast. Lothar doesn’t have an agent and takes care of his own sponsorships, which helps. There are a few other bike sponsors throwing around serious money, but he feels comfortable with our bikes and our company (he must have forgotten about our 5am phone conversation back in 1996) and we agree that he will ride a Cervélo for one year and then we’ll see what happens.
Lothar is the most professional athlete I have ever worked with. I have never seen him without the proper logos on his polo shirt, the Oakleys on his head or the Nikes on his feet. This may not seem like rocket science, but how often haven’t you seen a pro dressed like a bum. Or even worse, a world-class triathlete once e-mailed all his sponsors including Adidas a race report and award ceremony picture. His feet are in the foreground of the photo and clearly show him wearing Reeboks.
At the 2001 Eurobike when I meet Lothar, he mentions that he has been experiencing some discomfort in his lower back. Since it is only one month before Hawaii we decide to take a look at his position immediately. We’re lacking the proper tools, so in true MacGyver fashion we construct a plumb weight from a full can of Red Bull and the string of my Eurobike pass. The string is attached to the opening tab of the can, so any sudden movement will open the can. It's like juggling with a handgranade after taking the pin out, but luckily there's no explosion. I quickly find the problem, and make some rather large adjustments. The saddle goes six centimeters forward (thanks to the adjustable geometry this is just a simple flip of the seatpost head) and we adjust the aerobar risers. Thank God it works, and two weeks later he e-mails me that the problems have completely disappeared and he’s flying on the bike.
After Hawaii Lothar contacts me to say that a bike company has made him and his wife an offer he really can’t refuse. Now that he has started a family, he has to make sure his future is secure. At the same time he says he wants to make sure there are no hard feelings, and why would there be. Most athletes would never have let me know this was about to happen, they would simply have gone silent and I would have learned about it through the grapevine. The fact that he tells me in advance and values our relationship beyond the business of sponsorships means a lot to me.
With respect to him no longer riding a Cervélo, I am as sad about that as he is, even though after 1996 I decided that this stuff wasn’t worth crying over. It really doesn’t matter nearly as much anymore to our company if we sponsor an athlete, but still I find myself lying awake for a few nights. The reality is that we are a small company and our means are limited. We are honored when an athlete of Lothar’s caliber chooses to ride our bikes, and we are proud that he has used a Cervélo to rise to the top spot on the Profile Design Long Distance Triathlon Ranking in the past two years. And now that he moves on, we’ll still be cheering for him and wish him all the best. And the two Ironman Germany wins (both secured during the bike leg), the chats at Lava Java, the meetings at Eurobike (usually with a German camera crew in tow), the Red Bull plumb weight, they will all be part of the fond Cervélo memories once I sit down in the rocking chair fifty years from now.
Several years later, I am a guest in the Inside Triathlon media van out on the bike course at Ironman Hawaii. We come up to Lothar Leder so I roll down the window to shout some encouragements. As soon as he sees me he says hi. Then he points to his “Cube”-labeled bike and says: “Das ist ein Walser, kennst du den?” [That’s a Walser, do you now them?] And so we chat about bike technology for a little while, until I get too conscious of the fact that he is trying ot win this race and should probably concentrate on that, so I say goodbye and we drive on.
A few months after that I get a call from Kai Hundertmarck, an ex-cycling professional who is making the switch to Ironman racing. He would like to ride a Cervelo which of course we would gladly help him with but first I want to know why he is contacting us. His answer is simple: “Lothar Leder recommended Cervelo.” The guy is a class act.
Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle