Zdenek Stybar won the cyclocross World Championships this weekend in Sankt Wendel, Germany, in dominating fashion. He dropped his last rival, Belgian Sven Nys, midway though the race and never looked back. In March, he is changing to the Quick Step team, switching his cyclocross career for a road racing one. After Sunday's race, Stybar gave his thoughts on the new team, but also looked back at the painful preparation for this year's Championships.
Stybar saw a circle closing in St. Wendel. "I came to Fidea as a World Champion in 2005, here in St. Wendel. I leave the team again as World Champion, again in St. Wendel, in 2011." Stybar has obtained two U23 World Championships titles and two in the elite category. "Four times I was World Champion with the Telenet Fidea team and I think I couldn't give more to them as I did," Stybar says.
His career is taking now a sharp turn and a step up. "For me, it is a dream to be on a big team like Quick Step." While he says that it will be a new world for him, some things are more like a deja vu. "It was the same when I signed the contract with Telenet-Fidea here in St. Wendel [in 2005]. I was sitting on the table with Bart Wellens, Erwin Vervecken and all the other stars from the team."
The experience was quite intimidating, with the shy Stybar sitting next to the big guns. "I didn't know these guys personally, just from the television and interviews - because they were my idols. Now it is one step higher and it will probably be the same." With the exception that Stybar is less shy and in fact his openness and willingness to quickly learn Flemish in his adopted country of Belgium has made him quite popular there.
After races, he routinely gives interviews in Flemish, then answers questions in English and Belgian TV often lets him chime in a sentence in Czech for his home fans. How good his Flemish has become was apparent during the press conference when the announcer asked the first question in German, which is a bit similar to Flemish. Stybar was ready to answer it, before they stopped him and had the question translated into English first.
So language wise, there won't be any surprises for Stybar. He just has to get on with the road now. "I am really motivated for it," he says. "Maybe after three years I will say it was a mistake but on the other hand when I will be older and at the end of my career I probably don't get the chance anymore." He is quiet realistic and the one thing he doesn't want is the regret at the end of the career that he didn't get a chance to try the biggest races in the world.
One of his biggest events so far - Sunday's Worlds - came with quiet a bit of pain. Stybar had a perfect start to the season, winning almost all his races until the end of October. Then a knee injury put his whole season in turmoil. An attempt to get going again was stopped in cold conditions at a race in Belgium.
When his season looked lost, Stybar went all or nothing. "Nobody expected it that I could play everything only on one card. It was my really big risk," he says about his decision to skip the World Cup in Pont-Château, France. "I was training as hard as I could in Mallorca. Maybe some people didn't believe it when I put on my twitter account how many hours I trained there." He admits he had many doubters that he would be able to get in the right shape for the season ending highlight in Germany. He wasn't one of them. "I knew what I was working for. Everything was planned for only one race."
For Stybar, this was more than just a race. "It was the only way how I could make my season good." Mallorca's intense training helped with that. "Actually, today during the race I was thinking about all the climbs that I had done in Mallorca and all the intervals. I exactly recognized the pain that I had during the race - it was the same pain that I had during the training over there."
He says that it was a good way for him to get ready for the Worlds, but he is not ready to patent the procedure. "I don't want to do it like this every year and in fact I hope I have never to do it again this way." It remains to be seen if he even has to worry about it during his time at Quick Step. If he will have the time and desire to do the cyclocross remains to be seen, at least at the level he had so far. Even a super cross racer like Lars Boom is very picky about the events he races and has bowed out of the 2011 World Championships weeks in advance.