Stefan Küng smiled when the question was put to him. His stance was already obvious, after all. Chris Froome's recent suggestion that time trial bikes could be outlawed from professional cycling was never likely to be endorsed by one of the peloton's foremost exponents of the discipline.
"The time trial has a long tradition, it's been part of our sport since the very beginning," Küng told Cyclingnews at the Volta ao Algarve. "For the development of material, it's good that we have time trialling. For me, it's the Formula 1 of our sport. All the innovation we have in the time trial sector also keeps pushing innovation in normal road racing."
Froome's comments, in a video posted to his YouTube channel, came in the context of the serious injuries Egan Bernal suffered when he crashed while training on his time trial bike in Colombia last month.
Küng, a time trial specialist since his junior days, has been banking training hours on open roads in his aerodynamic position for more than a decade, and he acknowledged the risks that such work poses.
"For TT training, I choose roads where it's really quiet, but even then I prefer to have my head a little bit up in the air, as I do in the race, so I can always look ahead of me," he said.
"You always have to be aware that you're in traffic. Even if you're doing efforts and you're hunched over a little bit, you always have to remember that you're training on an open road. Because otherwise, as you saw, it can unfortunately be very dangerous."
Küng won four time trials in 2021, including his second successive European title in the discipline, but he also endured heartbreak against the watch at the Tokyo Olympics, where he placed fourth, just four-tenths of a second off Rohan Dennis' bronze medal.
The Swiss rider was a model of magnanimity in the mixed zone in the immediate aftermath of that race, admitting that he simply could not have ridden a split-second quicker.
But even though he tempered some of his frustration with his gold medal ride at the subsequent European Championships, he admitted that his mind drifted back to Tokyo every now and then. As a winter sports fan, for instance, it's been hard to avoid thinking about Olympic medals over the past fortnight.
"I mean I managed to get over it. But the Winter Olympics is on at the moment and I'm following it closely, so for sure sometimes it comes to my mind," Küng said.
"When it's a really tight decision for the medals, then the memories come back. But in the end, I gave it my all and I did my absolute best. That's part of our sport and it's also what makes it beautiful. Sometimes it's the little bit that makes the difference."
Algarve
Like all elite time triallists, Küng spent a sizeable part of this winter seeking out those small pieces that could add up to a big difference in his solitary efforts this season. Now in his fourth season at Groupama-FDJ, Küng's equipment is familiar, but there were still tweaks to be made to his position ahead of the new campaign.
"We work on it every winter because you have to keep evolving and working on it to stay competitive," Küng said. "This year we made some other adjustments and I feel really comfortable so I'm looking forward to racing."
Küng has his first opportunity to road-test his new position on Saturday at the Volta ao Algarve when he will roll down the start ramp in Vila Real de Santo António as the favourite to win the stage 4 time trial, although Remco Evenepoel (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl) will also set out with considerable ambition.
The time trial is some 32.2km in length, and Küng is among the very few riders in the Algarve peloton who will relish such a striking distance at this early point in the season.
"I arrived here on Monday so I had a look at it on Tuesday. It's a nice course, with quite a tricky downhill, but it suits me," he said. "I put a little focus on every time trial I do in the season. And I did some TT work this winter as well."
The Volta ao Algarve is Küng's first race of the season and he already showcased his form with a notable cameo on behalf of David Gaudu on the summit finish at Alto da Fóia on stage 2. Küng set the tempo on the front of the dwindling leading group in the finale, and after helping to tee up Gaudu for stage victory, he still had the wherewithal to come home in 19th place, just 18 seconds down on his teammate.
"I was trying to hang on, but my preparation for the season was pretty good, so I just gave it a go. It's nice to be up there, to feel good," he said. "Unfortunately, I was cramping in the end. That often happens to me in the first race, but it's good to go deep. It will be good for the upcoming challenges."
