INTERVIEW: PAVEL SIVAKOV
The Russian-French Ineos rider on his cosmopolitan background and ambitions
Team Ineos is renowned for being a British team with a thoroughly international roster. So Pavel Sivakov, born in Italy and raised in France by Russian parents who also raced as pros, fits in perfectly. The 22-year-old winner of the Tour de Pologne tells Procycling about his cosmopolitan background and hopes for the future
The Ineos mechanics are hosing down the team bus parked outside their hotel on the outskirts of Liverpool, washing away the dirt and grit crusted on after another day of racing at the Tour of Britain. As Procycling wanders past, the Russian flag next to Pavel Sivakov’s name stands out among the Union Jacks and the ever-growing South American contingent of flags itemising the squad’s roster of nationalities. It therefore takes a minute to adjust when we meet with Sivakov to talk and the immaculate English that rolls off his tongue is laced with an obviously French accent. The name and the racing licence are Russian, but Sivakov’s facility with the language of Voltaire suggests that his upbringing has been more Paris than St Petersburg.
Italian born, French raised and the child of two former professional Russian cyclists, Sivakov has had both a typical and atypical route into the sport. His family background must have eased his path to the top, but there aren’t many Russo-French young riders in the WorldTour; still fewer winning big races at the age of 22. But in a sport that’s been undergoing significant internationalisation for three decades and more, it’s perhaps fitting that one of its brightest young stars is a product of such a varied cultural and national blend. Sivakov has enjoyed an excellent season this year, which includes ninth overall at his debut Giro d’Italia, and is at the heart of the Ineos project to maintain the stranglehold the British outfit has had on the grand tours since 2012.
It seemed inevitable from an early age that the younger Sivakov would eventually follow in the footsteps of his parents. “On your first day of school they ask what your name is and what do you want to be in the future and I was like, ‘I want to be a cyclist.’ But they were like, ‘That’s not a job.’ But I just didn’t care. I wanted to be a cyclist.” Sivakov says.
His father, Alexei Sivakov, spent six years racing for the the Italian Roslotto-ZG Mobili squad then the French BigMat-Auber team in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At BigMat, Sivakov senior rode alongside fomer British pro Jeremy Hunt and the current Tour de France course designer Thierry Gouvenou. He rode all three grand tours and in 1996, the year before Pavel was born, he came painfully close to a career-defining victory on the last stage of the Giro, but was beaten into second place in the sprint by Ukraine’s Serguei Outschakov. Sivakov’s mother, Aleksandra Koliaseva, meanwhile, was a two-time world champion in the team time trial for Russia, and held both the time trial and road race national titles.
Ask Sivakov, however, about what home life was like growing up - his father retired when he was eight, his mother in 2000, when he was three - and the details are scarce. After all, this was just normal life for him. “We just grew up with cycling,” he says. “Every day we spoke about cycling and it was good for me because I learned a lot from them, especially when I was young. I think that’s where they taught me the most. They give me advice now, but I also have some experience as well. For me it was a completely normal childhood and I don’t know any different, but I guess it’s different from anybody else.”
He recalls one unusual story passed down to him by his mother, from an edition of the Tour de l’Aude Cycliste Féminin - what used to be one of the longest running and most prestigious women’s stages races, which she also won.
“You wouldn’t get it nowadays with the extreme weather protocol, but when she was doing the Tour Féminin, the race had a massive hailstorm but they didn’t stop the race. She was in the break so they were scared to pull over and stop because they didn’t want the peloton to catch up, but it was super painful and she had massive bruises everywhere. It is kind of crazy when you think about it now.”
His mother, in particular, was something of a trailblazer. She returned to professional racing after giving birth to Sivakov, something which is still rare a quarter of a century on, let alone during the mid-1990s. Lizzie Deignan and Marta Bastianelli are two of the few exceptions today who show women can have a family and continue to race bikes successfully. Aleksandra, meanwhile, was back racing Flèche Wallonne, as well as the World Championships in Verona, less than two years after the birth of her son.
A RUSSIAN I N FRANCE
Sivakov insists that despite his upbringing as the child of two professional cyclists, he was never forced into the sport and instead tried his hand at anything and everything, from judo through basketball and tennis when he was growing up. But the lure of cycling was inevitable, and his natural talent made his taking up the sport all the more so. Aged 12 he entered his first race in the south west of France, and the memory is still fresh in his mind.
“I didn’t win it,” he says. “I was really pissed because I started my sprint too early and a guy came from behind and just flicked me, so I came in third.”
These first experiences of racing and riding in France became the backbone of Sivakov’s development in Saint-Gaudens - the small city south west of Toulouse, just north of the Pyrenees, where he grew up. But it was only when he joined Intégrale Bicycle Club Isle Jourdain Junior, a local club sponsored by Culture Vélo, in 2014 that he really started progressing.
“The owner of the brand is really interested in young guys, and developing local cycling. He helped me quite a lot in that period, helped me race a lot and race with the national team and that’s where I realised it was something I wanted to do in the future,” he says.
As fate had it, Nicolas Portal, the Team Ineos directeur sportif who comes from nearby Auch, knew of the project and took note of Sivakov’s results, which came thick and fast. His wins included the junior Tour of Flanders, Liège– Bastogne–Liège espoirs and by 2017 included the overall titles at the Baby Giro, Ronde de l’Isard and Giro della Valle d’Aosta and made him one of the most sought after U23 riders. He met Dave Brailsford at the 2017 Tour de France, and the Sky team principal’s persuasive powers led to Sivakov signing for the British team for 2018.
Despite the lifetime living in France, it was only when Sivakov moved to Sky that his French nationality was made official. And with this came questions of whether he could continue representing Russia - who he had represented as a junior at the European Youth Olympics and won junior national titles - or switch to the country of his adopted home.
“I always raced in France and even though I did the race for Russia, I only raced there once
“I didn’t win my first race. I was really pissed because I started my sprint too early and a guy came from behind and just flicked me, so I came in third”
and that was just a selection race,” he says. “I have been thinking, especially last year, about what could be the best for me, but in the end if you change your nationality you have to stop racing for two years for any national team, which would mean I miss Tokyo.
“That has been a big target for me because I want to do the Olympics, and my chances are much bigger to be selected for Russia than France.”
While the clear national identities of Bradley Wiggins, Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal were an integral part of their journeys to Tour de France glory, Sivakov has more of a Chris Froome-style cross-nationality make-up. Even following his decision to continue representing Russia, he says he can still feel an outsider at times.
He professes to feel French, but it is not as simple as all that. “When I am in France I seem like a Russian but when I am in Russia I seem French,” he admits.
Sivakov seems to have found a home within Ineos, a squad that started as inherently British but is now an international melting pot of cultures, featuring riders of 13 different nationalities in 2019.
“It’s a British team. That is good because it needs to have its identity and it should never lose that. But it’s also international; we have a big group of Latin American guys with Egan and Colombian guys, Polish guys, Dutch guys and guys from all over Europe,” Sivakov says.
Which group Sivakov fits into is up for debate -maybe it’s none of them; maybe it’s all of them. He speaks fluent English, French, Russian and Spanish, as well as understanding a bit of Italian. which makes him a multicultural rider on a multicultural team. This ability to blend in may also help with some of the challenges of being a promising young rider, especially given his upbringing in
Which group Sivakov fits into is up for debate - maybe it’s none of them; maybe it’s all of them. He’s a multicultural rider on a multicultural team
France. If he’d been French, his wins this year in the Tour of the Alps and Tour of Poland, and strong ninth place in the Giro d’Italia, might have exposed him to more pressure than he’d have liked.
“One thing you can see when a French rider gets really good, the media are all over it and maybe there is too much pressure,” Sivakov says. “I’m happy doing my own thing. Of course there is media attention when you are doing races, but in Russia they don’t really care. In France it is so much. For me it is more calm and releases pressure and when you want to perform that is what it is all about.”
LEARNING CURVE
Although Russia and France are the primary cultural influences on Sivakov, the almost forgotten country in Sivakov’s make-up is that of Italy, where he was born, in San Donà di Piave just north of Venice. He grew up in France, but his racing development has owed a lot to the country of his birth. His Tour of the Alps and Giro results are the most prominent, but his best U23 results also came in Italy.
“Since juniors, I have always loved racing in Italy. I only want to go there when I’m good though. For example, I won’t go to Il Lombardia this year because I know I won’t get top 10, I don’t want to stop that streak,” Sivakov says, half joking.
The Giro showed Sivakov’s experience beyond his years, particularly as he led a young Ineos team at the last minute after Bernal crashed and broke his collarbone in the weeks leading up to the race. He rode consistently rather than spectacularly, with seventh in Courmayeur the best single result.
“I was preparing to be really good and helping Egan on the climbs; I had a really good level having won the Tour of the Alps just before,” he says. “I got a call from my coach saying, ‘Looks like you are going to be doing the Giro as a leader, Egan just crashed out.’ But it worked out pretty well.”
Bernal, also 22, may have overshadowed Sivakov’s Giro exploits weeks later when he took the yellow jersey at the Tour, but the Tour understandably is a race Sivakov also sees himself riding - and maybe winning - one day. He got a taste of Tour life this summer, riding with sponsors of Ineos up the Col du Tourmalet, through the masses of waiting crowds, an hour before the race arrived on stage 14.
Sivakov is clearly learning at a rapid pace and will enter 2020 no longer under the radar.
“I want to keep progressing,” he says. “When you see Egan and Pogacar now, you think... These guys are my age and even younger, I don’t want to get beaten by a younger guy. I want to beat him.
“It keeps the motivation up seeing these young guys, because we are a young group and even in this team, with Tao [Geoghegan Hart] we keep ourselves motivated all the time because we want to be better. That’s a good thing, and it makes everyone work harder.”
Where Sivakov’s career goes in the future is still a mystery, and whether he reaches the starry heights he so far promises is also an unknown. But either way, you know the whole of the international cycling world will be keeping an eye on Sivakov from now on.