Читать книгу My World онлайн

37 страница из 72

I’d like to think that any Slovak youngster looking to take up cycling as a career would have an easier time of it than we did. And who knows, perhaps one day I’ll be the guy in the car urging on the next Slovak world champion. History has this funny way of repeating itself.

2015

ssss1

Oleg Tinkov is a funny bastard in so many ways. Funny in that he’s always playing the fool, or telling stories, or goofing around. Funny because he just can’t stop himself from saying the things that really shouldn’t be said. But also funny in that he’s just not wired up like other people.

It wasn’t Oleg Tinkov who brought me to the Tinkoff team, like you might think. The prime mover behind my decision to change teams for the first time in my career was Bjarne Riis.

Riis had been running a cycling team pretty much since the day he’d retired. He won the Tour de France in 1996, then rode alongside Jan Ullrich as his younger teammate took the victory the following year. Soon afterward he was instrumental in setting up the Danish team that would go on to become CSC and then Saxo Bank, winning most things that could be won at some point during the team’s existence. He had a reputation for getting the best out of riders who might have otherwise ridden out less stellar careers or even disappeared altogether. He sounded like a great fit for me. After bringing Tinkov in originally as a sponsor, he’d recently sold the team organization itself to the Russian oligarch, but he was continuing to work for the team as the head honcho on a three-year contract.