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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 started getting involved in cycling administration well before he stopped riding. He could see that there was little vision involved in Slovakian cycling, and what organization there was resembled a village party. Internationally, we were a joke, with Juraj and I and the others like us relying on the dedication of our parents to pull things together and to drive us to races all over central Europe. My contemporary Michal Kwiato remembers getting to junior races in, say, Croatia with the Polish squad and their matching bikes and kits, and so forth, then I’d be getting out of the back seat of my dad’s car with my bike wheels tucked under my feet and my cycling shoes wedged under the passenger seat.