Jörg Ludewig is happy to be "off of the powderkeg" and back on the bike. After a turbulent season which saw him ride the Giro d'Italia - and not much else - for T-Mobile Team and in which his career was nearly destroyed by an eight-year-old letter, he is now looking forward to starting over again in 2007 with Team Wiesenhof-Felt. Cyclingnews' Susan Westemeyer caught up with him after his new team's first meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Ludewig was a highly-regarded German rider who spent most of his career with Italian teams, where he developed the reputation of being an outstanding domestique and helper. But all of that was nearly wiped out this summer with the publication of a letter he wrote as a 22-year-old amateur riding for Team EC Bayer Worringen. In the letter he was seeking information about doping products and indicating a willingness to use them. That was as far as his interest in the products went, he claimed, and he went on to a successful professional career.
Unfortunately for him, this letter turned up again shortly after the beginning of the Tour de France, when not only T-Mobile and the German media but all of cycling were hypersensitive to any kind of charges related to doping. The team announced that Ludewig would not race for them again and that his contract would not be renewed
