In the Words of Ignatas Konovalovas

You can follow BikeRouteHub on facebook.com/BikeRouteHub and Twitter @SamLStandsUp

In happier times at the Cervelo Test Team

Most cycling fans will be familiar with the brilliant Beyond the Peloton series of short documentaries produced during the Cervelo Test Team's two seasons in the sport. Anybody who saw those videos couldn't help but be captivated by the softly spoken Lithuanian, Ignatas Konovalovas. "The best moments of my career would be the two years at the Cervelo Test Team, the team we had and the Giro stage win, that was the best period of my career". During his career Ignatas has raced for two start-up teams, Cervelo and MTN-Qhubeka, "everyone is new in the team so it's not like you go to a family which has their routine and everything, you are part of building the routine and the culture. You don't need to integrate into something, you are all integrating together". In between the two new teams he joined Movistar, who have been around for 35 years in a number of different guises, I asked him about that transition, "I was thinking a lot about it when I moved to Movistar. I think Cervelo was the best team ever and the problem with that is that it was such a great team and such a great atmosphere and so professional that after that everything feels like a step down. I don't say that it was bad at Movistar but when you go down from Cervelo to Movistar it feels like taking a step back like 5 or 10 years. When your results just suddenly go down then you start to think even more about it".

The arrival of the Cervelo Test Team seemed to raise the curtain on a new era of cycling and, although Sky are often credited with the 'marginal gains' approach to cycling, it was the Cervelo team who were early adopters of many of the technologies which are now seen as de rigour in the peloton, "2009 was the first year where teams started to ride aero race jerseys and teams were laughing at us but then in 2010 all the teams were wearing them and if you weren't then the teams were laughing at you. When I joined the team I felt like I was going back to school, for one of the first meetings we met every sponsors and they explained to us why we are using these tyres or why we are using these handlebars or these wheels". Having seen the improvements that attention to detail and technology could bring to a team it was interesting to see how much of this Konovalovas was able to take to his future teams, "what I had in my head I kept with me but it's not like you can come into a new team and say this is it this is how it should be. What I liked from Eusebio Unzue when I joined Movistar was that I was asked how things were done at Cervelo and what they could do differently. I was amazed when I joined Movistar in 2011 that they didn't have an osteopath. In Cervelo at every race we had a osteopath, chiropractor or at least a high quality physio so it was stuff like that that I shared my opinion about".

Wearing the King of the Mountains Jersey at the Tour du
Haut Var this year.

On a personal level the stage win Ignatas took during the 2009 Giro, where he also supported Carlos Sastre to 4th, later changed to 2nd after disqualifications, has been the highlight of his career so far, "that was incredible, in fact that Giro as a whole was my best memory in cycling. Those three weeks were incredible because we had four stage wins and 2nd overall. Doing a first Grand Tour and taking a stage win as well you just can't explain how good it is".

The reason why cycling captures the imagination so well is because everybody knows what it is like to ride a bike and what it is like to ride a bike fast or race a friend and although the distances and speeds for the pros are greater the fundamentals remain the same. What very few people can truly understand though is what it feels like to ride a bike day after day for three weeks, "well of course it is exhausting it's very hard, I don't know how the GC guys are feeling when they have to fight every day 100%. For us, the support riders, we can think, well I feel shit today I'll get dropped in the first gruppeto and try and survive. For me I was always getting into a really bad day around stage 8 or 10 and thinking what am I doing here and will I finish. But on the other hand it's like if you see a bunch of sheep crossing a road, one sheep will cross and all the others follow and if the stupid sheep decides to run up a climb then all the others run up the climb so it's like a routine and you're all doing the same thing so you feel like a robot and you can do it without thinking". The reality of a Grand Tour is that it's incredibly hard, can you ever enjoy riding a Grand Tour? "I rode six Grand Tours and I can say that there were some I really enjoyed and some I didn't so much or at least there were periods where I really enjoyed it. In general though to ride a Grand Tour it's nice and it's something that I'm missing".

The spoils for the winner of the 4 Days of Dunkerque

Ignatas currently rides for the French team Marseille 13-KTM at the Continental level, he describes what led to him making the decision to move down the hierarchy, "I got informed that I will not be a part of the MTN-Qhubeka team in September at the World Championship, it was so late but I could smell it coming really but still I had no information". When talking about the contract situation in cycling and the increasing difficulty in finding a contract, Ignatas paints a worrying picture, "every year now for maybe three years I hear guys say 'this year is the worst it's been' and every year it's the same and it's getting worse and worse".

For many riders a move to a lower level can be the perfect launchpad to move back up to the World Tour level and that is the same for Konovalovas, "that was my big ambition for the year to do everything to show that I could come back to the levels I was at before. It's really hard though because all my results were in France so I can't go to BMC and say 'take me on for the year' because we'd never done a race together, maybe all year we will do one or two of the same races". It's true though that Ignatas is an attractive prospect to any team, he's a Grand Tour stage winner and he won the 4 Days of Dunkerque in May, "there has been some talks but so far just talks. I have an agent and he is talking, like every agent he is talking all the time, but I think things will move after the Tour".

Kitted out in the futuristic Cervelo gear.

Ignatas' home country of Lithuanian is one of the smallest and poorest in the EU but they consistently punch above their weight in cycling, I ask him what he thinks the future holds, "I actually think the future is bright, not the immediate future maybe but 10/15 years. There are more and more people who are working their jobs and then going out and buying new bikes and that is a good thing but at the professional level we really need a continental team in Lithuania to grow the sport. Ramunas Navaradauskas is really the last generation of riders coming through, there are a few guys around riding at the amateur level but there's not really anyone else at the moment". The link between the Baltic cyclists and the amateur team in Marseille is now firmly established but Ignatas explains the luck, and love, that started it, "there was actually a family in Marseille and the guy was dating a Lithuanian girl so he would spend the winter in Lithuania. I was 21/22 and looking to maybe go abroad to a team and he said 'there's a team in Marseille I can ask them'. I joined them and Evaldas Siskevicius (ed. who currently rides at Marseille 13-KTM) joined the year after and they seemed to be happy with us. We were young but we knew what we were doing and we had a desire to turn pro and we weren't just riding our bikes for pleasure".

Despite his biggest victory coming in a time trial, he has an interesting answer when quizzed on whether he will be looking for a good result in the World Championships Time Trial, "Actually no, I don't know what's happened but I no longer consider myself as a time triallist. Every time I was focussing on that and I start and I go and I come to the line and I look and think, ahh it's nothing special. I spent four years like that. I'm not really actually motivating myself for the time trials that much I'm more motivating myself for the road races that suit me. It's interesting for me why I've moved away from that, if I could explain it that would be nice".

We've come to the end of our time with the incredibly interesting Ignatas Konovalovas but as per usual we finish with a three question quiz, no one has ever got them all right remember...

BRH: At the 2009 Giro you finished ahead of two team mates in the GC, can you name them?
IK: Okay, Jeremy Hunt and who else was there? Lloydy? (Correct, Jez Hunt and Dan Lloyd 1-0 Ignatas)

BRH: Who is the current Estonian National Time Trial Champion?
IK: I don't know how to pronounce his name but Joeåår (Correct again, Gert Joeåår of Cofidis 2-0)

BRH: How many second places has Peter Sagan had at the Tour so far this year? (The question was asked after Stage 13)
IK: 4 - I saw a tweet from Tinkoff (Correct again, a whitewash! 3-0)

BRH: Thank you very much!
IK: Thank you.