In the Words of Kjell Carlstrom

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Kjell riding Amstel Gold with pre Vuelta 2011 Chris Froome
on his wheel. 

Describing someone as a Finnish cycling legend seems to be the definition of damning with faint praise but in the case of Kjell Carlstrom it's apt. He spent 10 years riding at the highest level of the sport before retiring after the 2011 season, since 2013 he's been working as a DS for the IAM Cycling team. I asked him whether he saw himself as more of a father figure or a teacher in his new role, "maybe a bit of both, I think when you get to the World Tour level you don't really need a teacher. You maybe need someone who reminds you of certain things and that's maybe more of a father. But of course when you are young in your first year you need a teacher but that is often another rider". Kjell spent almost all his career as a domestique but he doesn't believe that makes it easier for riders to listen to him but it does give him a different perspective, "it enables me to see things in a different way. If I would've been a top top rider it would've been more difficult. Everyone suffers the same whether you're the first guy or the last and you've been helping out".

Earlier in his career Kjell rode for the newly created team Sky who were famous for starting the "marginal gains" trend in modern cycling. "In 2010 they looked at marginal gains but they didn't look at the whole picture. When it started going good everyone else saw that and wanted to do the marginal gains and that's pushing the sport forward. You could say that if Sky never did the marginal gains then you would've needed less money to be winning as much. Now everybody is looking at marginal gains so everybody else is spending more money". With marginal gains, once a team develops a gain, wearing skinsuits in a road stage for example, it's often easy for other teams to replicate it, "somethings you can copy, it's not just about the material that you can get marginal gains from it's a lot about the skills and just doing things a little differently to what we did before. Some of those things they don't cost anything you just have to figure them out. At IAM we look at nutrition because the cyclist's motor has to be running on full. We look at recovery, straight after the race is it better to do some cooling or riding on the rollers and the same thing goes for the preparation before the race".

Kjell's greatest victory, a breakaway in
the 2008 Paris-Nice

As a rider Kjell would just fulfil his job and that would be it but as a DS he has the added difficulty of justifying sponsor's investment with results, I asked him whether it is possible to quantify a result, and if so would a stage winner have been more valuable than the top 10 overall at the Tour with Mathias Frank, "that's really difficult actually. The victory is always the victory so even if it's just one stage win the media coverage is so great that it's almost always better than a top 10. I would have to say that to quantify it a stage win is better. On the other hand our objective was to get a top 10, of course we wanted also to win a stage but there's not that many teams who can do both". For a team like IAM is it a case that you have to give up the top 10 to achieve a stage win? "Not necessarily, top 10 at the Tour is not something that you actually have to go all in for. We actually tried for the stage win with Mathias to Pra Loup but it didn't happen".

As we've said, Kjell's career was largely spent in the domestique role but he did have some chances to ride for himself and was encouraged to do this at his final pro team, Sky, "I think that Sky would've loved me do some more for myself but it's difficult making that switch back. Simon Gerrans he did well in that but he also has a little bit more of a winner's style than me". Having been on the side of the domestiques and the side of a protected rider I asked Kjell whether he found it difficult to ask riders to support him and how he felt knowing that 8 riders were sacrificing their chances for him, "Not really, I think most of the times you have to go for the best option and when you go for that option you go full gas. You don't go 50% or 80% you go 100%. You have to decide who it is and secondly you have to decide how to do it. You can have a second option but that doesn't mean you don't go 100% for the first option".

Throughout his career Kjell could often
be found driving the pace.

The current go to topic in cycling is power and as a relatively early adopter of the power meter I asked Kjell whether the amount of data that fans have access to at the moment is actually positive, "it's a good thing if everybody would have the knowledge to analyse the data and the problem is that there's not actually that many who can. You saw at the Tour the polemic that arose because even the so called experts weren't able to analyse it. I don't think Froome's numbers, obviously they were very special but I don't think they were that much more than everyone else". Kjell then went on to explain how knowing a rival's wattage would be advantageous to a team, "during a race it doesn't really matter. The thing is you need to know how he has achieved this number and then you can find some things that might work for you as well. If you just saw the power then it's not really a big advantage to you. If someone says that all the data should be public, I don't think that's a good thing because if someone has an advantage in training then they would be giving that advantage away. I think it would be different if it was stored in a safe place and some specialist would look at it. The biggest problem is that you can't always say that the power meter is 100% reliable because it depends on the weather and many different factors".

Most cycling fans would be able to name at most two Finnish cyclists, Kjell and Jussi Veikkanen. With the inclement weather and lack of racing it's hard to see where future cycling success will come from but Kjell is confident and passionate about Finnish cycling, "we have some good young riders who are showing themselves and we have created this project called Fincycling which is promoting cycling and trying to give young guys the funds to compete abroad. I think we are trying to do our best to move forward but it's not that easy. It's not the biggest sport in Finland but it's really really popular to cycle to work or as a hobby. I think in some years it will be different to how it is now and we're moving in the right direction". Finland is firmly in the developing nation category but would it benefit more from the presence of a UCI ranked race or a UCI ranked team? "I would have to choose both but if I have to make a choice I would go for the team because the team is something you can build around. You can get people interested in the team and the results and the results are constant throughout the year they're not just one time in the year like a race. It's also really nice to have a race because it gets the young people involved and it gives domestic riders a chance to ride against the big big names".

Since 2013 Kjell has swapped the bike for a more comfortable
team car.

At this point in the year Kjell shifts his focus away from purely racing and towards recruiting for the upcoming season but with such a volume of youth racing it's increasingly difficult to find hidden future stars, "we look at race results and use Pro Cycling Stats which is a great tool but then you also have to be scouting. You have to be looking at the U23 and the juniors and if you know them then you can even look at younger. At U23 they're a little bit older but you can really see how well they're doing". The other question is how much flexibility do management have when selecting riders for the next season, do they have to select Swiss riders because IAM is a Swiss sponsor? "No, not really. Of course the thing is that at the moment we have a lot of young guys and you can't have the whole team of young guys. We're not so much of a young team but we have lots of neo-pros so that can be an issue".

Kjell's racing career spanned three decades covering the most tumultuous times the sport has faced and he lists the anti-doping controls as one of the biggest changes he has seen. The other is less welcome, "there has been a real deterioration in respect for people and that is a bad thing. Maybe that's an issue with the world though because there seems to be less respect for people and things in general. Inside the peloton you have more crashes and more people taking stupid risks. It would be really really nice if the young kids were coming into the peloton and remembering about respect for other people. I think sometimes riders come up through development squads and think they've made it already but I also think that many riders are already so good so young and they have won so much throughout their career and so they are on a pedestal and they haven't been taught how to behave when they get to the pros. Before if you were a young rider the other riders would immediately tell you if you'd done something wrong and if you didn't understand the first time then the second time would be harsher".

Being first hasn't been something that has translated to his
quiz answers.

Having listened to Kjell for almost an hour it's clear that with his experience and softly spoken confidence the future of Finnish cycling and IAM cycling are in good hands. Kjell's position as one of two Finns who raced at the highest level is secure for now, and probably the next decade but in fifteen or twenty years that won't be such an exclusive club, that's certainly what he's hoping anyway.

Bike Route Hub: In 2011 you finished the Giro d'Italia, but can you name your team mate who finished behind you on GC?
Kjell Carlstrom: Behind me? That was a bad question! I would have to say that there was no one that finished behind me as a team mate. (It was Russell Downing, 1-0 BRH)

BRH: Who is the current Lithuanian Time Trial Champion?
KC: Saramontins? (Lithuanian, Kjell) Bagdonas? (It was Rasmunas Navaradasukas, 2-0 BRH)

BRH: Mathias Brandle set the hour record earlier this year but how far did he ride, to the nearest tenth of a kilometre?
KC: Ermmm, 51.185? (It was 51.85, 3-0 BRH) I got the right numbers but in the wrong order.

BRH: Thank you for your time
KC: Thank you.