fearing we would be caught with 200 meters to go, thankfully Cancellara opened up the sprint.
He did so at the perfect moment for me, just before the pace dropped off, and I soared around him to take my first Tour de France stage win, freewheeling enough to be able to do the chicken dance all the way over the line. Cancellara wasn’t happy with me, initially because he felt I had ridden his coattails to the win, which was true, but he was a superstar, and I was a rookie. Then that celebration really got up his nose, taking it as a personal snub and a sign of disrespect.
By the time we reached Paris, I had my first Tour de France green jersey, and I’d been able to add the Incredible Hulk and the Running Man to my celebrations. I would have won more, but I’d run out of ideas for victory salutes. At least Cancellara knew by then it was nothing personal.
The 2013 season was my best year to date, picking up 22 wins in all sorts of races on all sorts of terrain, making me the most successful cyclist on the ProTour circuit that year. Or should I say the “winningest,” like the Americans? It’s a horrible word, but it’s more accurate. Who is to say that winning 22 races is more successful than winning one Tour de France and 17 other races, like Chris Froome did that year?
I’d initially thought it was going to be the year of the second place when I went through March with second at Strade Bianche, Milan–San Remo, E3 Harelbeke, and the Tour of Flanders. Planted in the middle of that run was my first classics win. At last. Belgium was bitterly cold and apparently Gent–Wevelgem was nearly cancelled, but instead it was shortened by 50 kilometers. That obviously suited me, what with stamina (in my opinion) being the older riders’ strength, and I found myself at the sharp end of the race all day. With 4 kilometers to go and my breakaway rivals wondering how they were going to beat me in the sprint, I attacked instead and won on my own, popping some wheelies to please the crowd who’d been risking hypothermia to see me win.
I suppose in retrospect, 2014 wasn’t so bad, with a third Tour de France points jersey in a row to show for my troubles and seven wins along the way, but in truth it was hellish. I was realistic enough to know that my upward trajectory to this point had been such that I might need to take stock. I was well-known now and heavily marked whenever I raced, which was bound to bring my win numbers down a bit. I was focusing more and more on the big titles like Flanders and Roubaix, which are always going to be harder to win—that’s the whole point—and everyone needs a bit of luck. I could even deal with treading water for a season if that’s what it was going to take to move on in the longer term.
But this wasn’t treading water. This was shit. I was rubbish. I was exhausted all the time. I had won that Tour green jersey again, but 2014 was the first time I’d ridden a Tour de France and not won a stage. No silly celebrations. Shit, no normal celebrations. I felt I was letting everybody down: my friends, my family, Team Peter, my teammates, Cannondale (as Liquigas had become), everybody.
It was time for a change. Either that or go home to Žilina and give up.
I love Slovakia. There’s something exciting about coming from such a young and proud country, like you’re always doing things for the first time. It’s a crazy way to think, really. Slovak people have been here for the thick end of two thousand years, and we’ve got our own language and our own distinct style of medieval architecture that you’d recognize immediately.
But living memory is a bit different. We spent most of the twentieth century being pulled between the competing might of Germany and the Soviet Union, and more often than not, we were paired up with our Czech neighbors. We were finally parted from them without the need for much more than a handshake and a wave in 1993, a process so without acrimony that it’s popularly known as the Velvet Divorce. We still share a lot of stuff with the Czechs. After all, they make the beer, so there’s absolutely nothing to be gained in falling out with them. Oh, and we’re in the European Union, too. I’m looking forward to one of my British friends effectively explaining to me why leaving it is such a good idea. I’ve been waiting a little while now.
There are about 5 million of us Slovaks, which puts us in the same ballpark as Norway, Finland, and Ireland by population—yes, I can use Google and Wikipedia, thank you—but we’re short on national heroes whether in history, art, or sport, so it’s a very cool thing for us to have a world champion in anything. I do feel a certain mixture of pressure and pride. You can’t avoid it, not when everybody in the street wants to shake your hand or take a selfie with you, and I’m not going to be the miser who denies them. I’d want one. And as there’s only 5 million of us, I’m working my way through everyone who wants one quite systematically. It’s not so much that I’m super famous or anything like that, but more to do with us not having too many famous people, if you see what I mean. We don’t, as a rule, go in for celebrity culture much in Slovakia. It’s not like you get people throwing themselves at your feet or silly stuff like that; we’re all just people getting on with our lives.
Would I be the rider I am today if I hadn’t grown up in Slovakia? That’s a really interesting question. I’m always being asked about my antics on a bike. I mean, the way I ride my bike and do tricks, wheelies, stunts, avoid crashes, that sort of thing. In fact, I’m usually being told, “Peto, no wonder you can do wheelies; it’s because you used to do BMX. Hey Peter, you can park your bike in a roof rack on top of a car because you were a mountain biker.”
These things are true to a certain extent. You need a whole new set of skills to ride mountain bikes and BMX. But I had a lot of those skills before I even started doing those things. In my opinion, the most useful education for being a professional athlete, pretty much any sport, is a childhood spent outdoors, and as a youngster I was given free rein to explore and play in the Slovakian countryside. Other families probably thought I was wild . . . climbing trees, hiking out through the forests, swimming in the lakes and rivers, and building dens and camps in summer. Then in winter we would be skiing, sledding, and organizing the world’s largest snowball fights.
While you think you’re just having fun and being a tearaway, you’re learning crafts and skills. Coordination is probably the most obvious one, but you’re building your strength, finding out what your body can do, discovering your limits, and then trying to reset them to a higher level. You’re training, really, whether you want to be a soccer player, an ice hockey player, or a cyclist. Often, when I’m hurtling down a mountainside or testing my nerves in a fiercely contested bunch sprint, I’m drawing on childhood experiences with my big brothers in the Slovakian countryside.
I’m not Slovakia’s first cycling champion. That accolade belongs to Ján Valach. He was a Slovak guy riding on international teams and competing in big races up until 2010, and he was the only guy we had to look up to when we were coming through the ranks. But more than that, Ján always had the ability to see the bigger picture, which made him the perfect man to drag Slovakian cycling up by its bootstraps and really make something of the national setup. He has been behind the wheel of the car at each of my world championship victories, and now I’m lucky enough to have him with us in the BORA-hansgrohe team, too.
Unfortunately, those perceptive directeur sportif (DS) roles at Richmond, Doha, and Bergen are only part of the story, and the other half is sadly the narrative of my Slovakia as I see it today.
Ján
