EUGENIA BUJAK
The Slovenian road and TT champion on growing up in Poland and finding a home at Alé
I was born in Lithuania but I come from a Polish family.
The place where I was born connected me to Lithuania, but all my family is Polish; one grandmother came from Belarus. Until I was six or seven years old I lived in Lithuania and then I started school in Poland. I was living with my grandparents for a few years, because my mum was working hard in Poland and trying to find a better life for us. My grandparents took care of me very well, but I missed my parents.
We moved to the south of Poland to a little village, Turnitsa
- this is close to the city of Rybnik or maybe you know Katowice. There I got a new family, a second father, and then later a second little brother, so life began there.
My older brother got a bike.
I stole his bike every day because I wanted to join the kids in our village and ride with them.
When I was a junior I changed teams to a local club but a bit of a better one, in Sosnowiec, where I am living now.
There I got a lot of support from my future husband and his parents, because they bought the team.
I developed year by year, and in 2011 I got a chance to try track cycling in the Polish national team.
And then my road cycling went down a bit, and I lost one year to learn track because I was already an under-23. I really didn’t know how to ride the track, I was just a strong rider for the team pursuit. That year, the cycling world opened to me through track cycling.
I heard a lot that I was not a rider for winning, to be good.
I was just hearing, ‘Oh yeah, Eugenia is a rider for point A to B, or maybe for hard work.’ I was strong but not good enough in the head, maybe, to win. They just put it into my head that I was not good enough. You are this: just a hard worker.
I won the points race at the European Championships.
But that was another lucky moment in my career. Our leader had an injury and could not come to the Europeans so I got an opportunity to race for myself and I think I took this chance really well. I could feel that it was not true, everything they were saying about me. I knew I was strong but I didn’t know that I could get good individual results, as well.
I wanted to stop track after 2015, after the World Championships, because it was really difficult to hold form in both disciplines…
On the track I felt like I was their property. I could not rest when I needed to. All the time, I was pushing, pushing.
The idea to change nationality came from Slovenia.
It was one of those days when I was really destroyed. It was a really difficult day for me and one of the coaches said, ‘Don’t worry. What if you changed nationality?’ Something warm came over my whole body. I didn’t think about it seriously; it was a decision I made after some years. I didn’t want to change just to Slovenia. I got the chance to hold both nationalities and that was very important to me. I didn’t want to leave Poland just because of some people, the federation. It’s my life, it’s my family and I feel Polish. But now I also feel Slovenian because the people really helped me a lot.
I found really good people at Alé and for me and for my husband it’s a second little family.
They also gave a chance to my husband. He has been working with us from the beginning.
Now, in this team, I am mostly a helper for Marta Bastianelli or Mavi García.
But the team also gives me the chance to ride for myself. It is really nice that they also believe in me. I really like one-day races, harder ones, not flat - I am not really good at that. Trofeo Binda, all classics, they’re really nice for me. I can also do well in short stage races with a time trial or prologue.
I am really proud to wear the Slovenian national jersey and I really want to develop Slovenian women’s cycling.
I want to show this jersey, I want to show the world that the Slovenian women are also racing.