INTERVIEW: MICHAË KWIATKOWSKI
Micha¯ Kwiatkowski is a classic all-rounder, a rider who can sprint, time trial and climb and he was rarely out of the frame in 2017, winning a monument while also delivering a stand-out performance at the Tour. Procycling visited Kwiatkowski and the acad
Team Sky’s Polish all-rounder takes Procycling through his targets for 2018
Most weeks during the winter, Micha¯ Kwiatkowski - polite, humble and quiet - would drop in at the Polish state sports school where he once lived, learned and trained, to talk to the current crop of wide-eyed teenagers about his racing career. Sometimes, the 2014 world champion would lead a core stability class or a training ride. Afterwards, perhaps following a coffee with his old coach in the high-ceilinged office, Kwiatkowski would make the short drive home. And if thoughts moved to think of the season ahead, he would consider ways to destroy his rivals in the upcoming Classics.
Procycling met Kwiatkowksi in Torun, the walled city halfway between Warsaw and Gdansk. It’s a sleety, frigid day on the banks of the leaden Vistula. Here in Kwiatkowski’s territory, the beautiful and the brutal are built side by side. Away from the picture perfect old town of cobbles and clock towers, in the spartan Soviet era outskirts, and overlooked by gloomy tenements, sits the bland Szkola Mistrzostwa Sportowego, the sports school that became his home from home. Kwiatkowski, once dubbed “a work of art” by Brian Holm, his former DS at Quick-Step, was so hell-bent on becoming a pro that he asked his parents if, aged 14, he could become a weekly boarder in the school’s dilapidated accommodation to focus more fully on his racing. “You grow up quicker when you have to live on your own,” he told
Procycling. “You have to take the responsibility for more things than if you’re with your parents – you don’t call mama and say ‘I’m hungry.’”
Hunger of another kind drove the Pole forward. He admited he took a laissez-faire attitude to his schoolwork, especially once he started to clean up on the domestic junior calendar. All he could think about was getting away, making it as a pro. When Procycling visits the school, which is a brighter place these days, it buzzes with excitement: Kwiatkowski is in the building.
In 2013, he set up the Copernicus Cycling Academy, which uses the school’s facilities. Back then, at 23, Kwiatkowski had only a Polish road race title and a Three Days of West Flanders prologue win in his professional palmarès. Real fame was 10 months away, yet it was still the moment he started giving back. Out of his own pocket, he funded the refurbishment of the dormitory and has helped buy team cars. Now, his name helps attract more of the basic but reliable kit the riders use. Some signed jerseys, augmented by gifts from other professionals, brighten the gym walls and there’s a celeste Bianchi, circa mid-1990s, mounted on the office wall. Beneath it is the desk of Marcin Mientki, a tall, vigorous-looking ex-track rider who competed at the Sydney Olympics. He was Kwiatkowski’s second coach and their bond runs deep. He’s the academy’s head coach.
“I got a lot of help myself,” Kwiatkowski explained in his quiet English. “I never bought myself a race bike or stuff like that – I was always given it and that’s why I’m a professional cyclist now. No pros have yet been produced in Copernicus but hopefully they will be in future.”
Given this is where it all started, and his old coaches are present, Procycling asked if
they were confidants who had helped shape his career? Kwiatkowski puffed his cheeks. “I can’t really say there was one guy. I have a group of friends who I might ask for their opinion but it’s up to me to listen and make my own decisions.”
He’s well aware his position now means he’s the one the young riders look to. “I’ve achieved a bit in cycling so I think for most of the young riders I’m an idol or something like that, so whatever I say, they will listen carefully. It’s a big responsibility to be an example. You can’t just be big-headed and you can’t be saying stupid things.”
Kwiatkowski could be forgiven if his head did grow a little wider after a confidence-boosting 2017. The all-rounder returned four wins, including Strade Bianche, San Remo and San Sebastián, and it wasn’t difficult to detect the resurgence within the 27-year-old. His return to form reawoke memories of 2014. That year ended in rainsodden Ponferrada with him kissing the national eagle on his jersey as he became the first ever Polish world champion. It was the ninth and final win of a superb season. But after winning the Paris-Nice prologue and Amstel in the following year, he faded. A subdued showing at the Tour ended with him climbing off and sitting down near the foot of the Col d’Allos the day after he had confirmed to the Quick-Step Floors chief, Patrick Lefevere, that he was departing to Sky. “The mentality on Quick-Step when racing the Tour was winning stages and combining that with the GC,” Kwiatkowski says. “I was full gas for the first week, and then the second and third week was pretty horrible. Okay, I did well in 2013 [he finished 11th when he had been given a freer rein] but then in 2014, and ‘15 I just blew myself up every single time, which is difficult. You can’t do a three-week race like that, thinking about the GC and Cavendish in the sprints as well… you’ve got your limitations.”
The following spring, now with Sky, he started brightly. A couple of good results in the hilly Majorca Challenge races in January and victory in E3 Harelbeke was better, but it didn’t last. His accomplished time trialling regressed: he finished in the top 10 of a TT on only one occasion. His climbing ossified too: he registered double digit, sometimes triple digit results for the rest of the year. He didn’t make Sky’s Tour team. His Vuelta ended on the seventh stage, albeit after a day in the leader’s red jersey. “I remember riding the Vuelta with him and he was very depressed about the shape he was in,” said his friend and teammate, Micha¯ Go¯as.
To where had Holm’s masterpiece disappeared? After the 2014 Worlds victory at the age of 24, little seemed beyond his reach. Back then he was even talked of as a future grand tour contender. Go¯as said the rainbow jersey weighed heavily on
“Whatever I say, the young riders listen carefully. It’s a big responsibility to be an example. You can’t just be big- headed and you can’t be saying stupid things”
Kwiatkowski and that he was also under pressure to stay at Quick-Step. When he opted for Sky, relations with Lefevere soured for a time. At Sky, a more nebulous suspicion for his poor form gained traction: his hefty new contract had spoiled him.
Kwiatkowski characterised 2016 as “a horrible season”, but he leaned in to refute the notion he’d grown complacent. “It was the opposite. From the beginning of my career, the only thing I believed you needed to become a champion was to train hard, train hard, train hard – that’s it. I was over-motivated and I blew myself up before the season had really started. That’s why 2015 started so strongly,” he insisted. “I was flying from the beginning – Algarve, Paris-Nice and those races – and by March and April I was out of fuel. That happened again, even worse, in 2016.
“When you join a new team, you’re thinking, ‘Okay, I’ll show what I’ve got from the beginning of the first camp,’ even if it’s December or January. I wanted to stay with them, train as much as I can and show I’m actually a guy with high ambitions. That was what killed me.”
Perhaps, additionally, he hadn’t got on with the training schedule Tim Kerrison, Sky’s lead trainer, had drawn up. “You can’t say straight away at the beginning when you see the programme, ‘I like that, but maybe I’ll do 80 per cent of it,’” he replied. “It doesn’t work like that.
“When I signed to Sky I agreed to do what they asked me and I would be open to new things. More volume, intensity – whatever – I wanted to try it. With Tim [at the end of 2016] we sat down and discussed my experiences, his experiences and we adjusted my training and programme to match my abilities.” The upturn in fortunes was near instantaneous: second at the Volta ao Algarve, first at Strade Bianche, his second title in the Italian race. Two weeks later, he won his maiden monument in a pulsating finale at San Remo. He hit the hilly Classics hard and could have – should have – won Amstel Gold Race but overconfidence got the better of him and he messed up the sprint against Philippe Gilbert. “I would put money on myself to win that sprint and that’s why I lost,” he said. His seventh at Flèche Wallonne and third at LiègeBastogne-Liège was a body of work that rivalled 2014 for consistency. He’d been imperious all spring.
At the Tour he became one of Chris Froome’s right hand men – perhaps even his saviour, following stage 15’s crisis at the bottom of the Col de Peyra Taillade, when Ag2r attacked and Froome broke a spoke. He gave up his wheel to Froome. When he conspicuously threw his shades into the verge while setting a fierce pace on the Izoard – the last of several first-class climbing performances – his MVP status was assured. Froome reportedly took to thanking the Pole a couple of times a day. “I couldn’t believe that I was doing so well on the climbs myself,” Kwiatkowski said. His parting shot was a narrow second in the TT on stage 20 to compatriot Maciej Bodnar.
The weekend after the Tour, he won Clásica San Sebastián after bridging up to the lead group on the twisty descent of the Bordako Tontorra and winning the fiveman sprint. Group sprinting, climbing, time trialling, descending – all those qualities that Holm had admired as first class – were finally back in exhibition.
“The best thing that happened was that I performed throughout the season,” Kwiatkowski said. “From Valenciana where I started until the Worlds I enjoyed it and I was in the game in every kind of race. I was just happy that people in the team just didn’t say, ‘Ah, he’s got a big contract and he’s a waste of money.’ They supported me. We set up the goal that I have to enjoy the bike again in 2017,” he said. It worked.
San Remo has a habit of producing great finish-line photos, such as last year’s balletic sprint between Kwiatkowski, Peter Sagan and Julian Alaphilippe. The trio slipped away on the Poggio and gave La Primavera its first, much-needed escape win since 2012. Kwiatkowski happily recounted the pressure he put on Sagan in the final, the rider who was born just over four months before him in 1990 and has been his sparring partner since the juniors.
On the Poggio, he tracked Sagan’s move at a distance and then played the delicate game of keeping the Slovakian interested in the escape and riding mostly on the front. “I was in a much better position than him,” says Kwiatkowski. “He was under pressure with the world champion’s jersey. Even if he’s won so many races, he’s not won San Remo before.
“I know what that situation is like – to have the jersey and everybody looking at you and waiting to see what you’re doing. I was trying to do that to Peter. Plus, I had Elia Viviani behind for the sprint. I was playing games…” he says, with the hint of a smile.
His finish was technically excellent in the way he sprinted into Sagan’s slipstream to gain a catapulting effect out of it. There is a feeling that a lot of Sagan’s superiority is based on his psychological dominance, that he almost has them beaten before the line. The Pole isn’t convinced. “Peter’s an animal, that’s for sure, but you don’t think about it when you’re racing – well, I don’t think about it.”
Their win count isn’t a contest – Sagan has 102, Kwiatkowski 18 – but in races where they have finished first and second, Kwiatkowski has won three of the four: San Remo 2017, E3 2016 and Strade Bianche 2014. Big races. It’s been ever thus: Kwiatkowski beat Sagan into second 10 years ago at the 2008 Junior Peace Race.
For 2018, the Classics preoccupy Kwiatkowski’s ambitions. Chief among them is Liège, where he’s finished third twice. He expects to be competitive enough to challenge at Flanders too. “I think setting up the goal for Liège is the best thing to achieve,” he said. “I don’t feel I really have to be focused on Flanders and that day physically, because it’s more about the equipment and how we are going to race team-wise.”
Flanders is not just a marking point on the campaign trail however, as Go¯as confirmed. “He doesn’t really talk about it too much but somehow in the back of his head Flanders is one of the main goals this year. I think he can win all of the monuments,” he said with the obvious caveat that that is a career’s worth of work.
Kwiatkowski describes his relationships with the biggest races as ‘fights’ and there’s a sense that he’s still fathoming their depths. But for a man whose exposure to the biggest races came largely through direct experience rather than the TV - race coverage in Poland was scant when he was growing up – he seems to appreciate their nuances and relish their individual challenges. He has a feeling for the calendar, cycling’s customs and history that he takes seriously. They’re just tokens but the insistence on a casquette, not a baseball cap, and the lavish gifts to the team-mates who help him win races are actions to be cherished as marks of a deference to the sport that made him. “It’s true,” said Golas, “He prides himself that winning these races is something spectacular, that it stays with you in life and you create a little bit of history.”
Kwiatkowski doesn’t get back to the academy much from one winter to the next – Torun’s travel options aren’t all that convenient and he prefers to reside on the Côte d’Azur. But when he returns at the end of 2018, all being well, it will be at the end of one of his busiest campaigns. After a hectic Classics programme he hopes to ride the Tour and the Vuelta – the first time he has started two grand tours in a year. After that he will ride the Worlds in Innsbruck – a course he likes. Given the jeopardy Froome is in after tripping the salbutamol test at the Vuelta, who knows what capacity that will be in – domestique de luxe, or, as the rider with the next best Tour result on Team Sky – 11th in 2013 – something more. He seemed content to let it pass this year; there are more immediate goals in the spring to occupy him. “I just want to race,” he said. “I want to win more Classics, I want to win Liège, I want Flèche and Amstel. I want to win all of them.” There’s no doubting the rejuvenating effects of a good season.
“I know what that situation is like – to have the jersey and everybody looks at you and waits to see what you’re doing”