Philippe Gilbert: I didn’t want an anonymous finale to my career

Philippe Gilbert (Lotto Soudal) may or may not win on Sunday in Paris-Tours, the last race of his glittering career. But as Gilbert sees it, what’s mattered to him the most in the last few months is that this weekend he will still be a player in the game, right until the very last metre of racing on Tours' Avenue de Grammont.

As one of the greatest and most versatile racers of modern cycling, the 40-year-old Belgian has taken four of the five Monuments, the 2012 Road World Championships, stages in all three Grand Tours and a host of other top victories.

Yet as Gilbert revealed in a lengthy interview on Friday with various media outlets,  after two decades of racing the time has come to look forward to a very “different kind of life, with different motivations and different goals.”

While as communicative as ever about his career, Gilbert remained tight-lipped about his post-racing future, simply saying that it will be revealed shortly. Cyclingnews understands from other sources, however, that rumours he could remain with Lotto Soudal as a director or even take on a more senior managerial role are likely to prove unfounded.

Meantime in the countdown to Paris-Tours, Gilbert was still looking as much back at his career as he was forwards, and as the Lotto Soudal racer sees it, he will be heading out of racing in the right way.

“I was quite strong the last month,” he said. “After the Tour de France I was getting better and better and I still could do some good work for Arnaud De Lie at Paris-Bourges on Thursday."

“This is what I was working for: I didn’t want to have an anonymous finale to my career, counting down the days. I really wanted to be able to do something and enjoy myself.”

With that in mind, Gilbert said he had no desire to go into Paris-Tours, a race he won twice early in his career, (and which in 2008 was a hugely emotional farewell victory to his first pro team, Française des Jeux) thinking that the rest of the peloton might do him some favours and gift him a last chance to raise his arms aloft in victory. Rather, he said, he wanted to be certain that it had been a battle all the way to the finish of the race and his career.

“I hope they don’t just let me pass through the middle of the peloton without a struggle and that there won’t be any ‘presents',” Gilbert said. “I hope they go on fighting the same way with me as usual and we’ll have a normal race.”

The weekend will see the lights go out on Gilbert’s career, but also two other major players in the sport in recent years will head for the door: Vincenzo Nibali (Astana Qazaqstan) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar). However, as the Belgian pointed out, the three have not been in touch about their imminent departures from racing: “I don’t have their telephone numbers, I never had contact with them and it will not start today,” he said with laconic humour.

What all three did have in common, Gilbert agreed, was that “we won in our careers from beginning to end. This is like [multiple Milano-Sanremo winner and former racer] Erik Zabel or [multiple World Champion] Paolo Bettini - well, Bettini didn’t race for a very long time but it was kind of the same."

"It’s nice to always be successful. But it requires a lot of organisation and training in your life, and a lot of motivation.”

In particular, when it came to the finer details of pro racing, there was one thing Gilbert still appeared to relish the most. That was the challenge of turning a situation where a near miss in a race was the most likely outcome for him, into a situation where he was far more likely to succeed.

“When you are training and see that you are missing just a little bit, 2, 3, or 4 per cent and you know that to win you have to be 100 per cent...at that point, your career becomes more like a way of life," he explained.

"You have to train more, you have to be more organised and be more efficient, and count on a strong team too. It’s a lot of work. But that’s something I’m going to miss, I’m sure.”

With 80 wins in his career to date - and perhaps 81 come Sunday evening - the highlights are too many and too varied to mention them all. But Gilbert did point out that one of his strongest suits was that he did not end up specializing in one particular type of racing

What's more, unlike Valverde, say, Gilbert claims he never thought about continuing for 'just one more year'. That was partly because he had achieved almost everything he wanted to do, and partly because, looking back on what he had targetted, he always knew his own limitations.

“20 years is enough. It would be really difficult to have gone on year after year. I’m just happy to have done this 100 per cent and also it’s time to do something different," he explained

“I was also lucky, because I have tried many different things. I tried the Flemish races, the Ardennes, Il Lombardia, Paris-Roubaix... I never went for Grand Tour GCs because I knew I didn’t have the potential to do well in them.”

“I never made the mistake of sacrificing one or two seasons for a top 10 or 15 overall in a Grand Tour. In my eyes, either you get on the podium or win, or you don’t go.”

Although Gilbert has victories ranging from the Canadian Classics to the Clasica San Sebastian, from the Tour de Beijing to the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix, the favourite of his five Monument wins, he said, remained closest to home, in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

“It was so special for me, partly because that is where I come from, and partly because it was the last in the series of four wins from Amstel through to Flèche Brabançonne [Brabantse Pijl], Flèche Wallonne and Liège.”

The first rider ever to take all four hilly Classics in a single year, Gilbert said, “It was an exceptional 10 days, really intense."

"I remember back then the expectations and pressure were growing higher and higher day by day. So it was nice to finish up with that win, and it was the most special of all of them, too.”

Gilbert’s victory in Liège that year, fending off the Schleck brothers, Andy and Frank, over the Côte de San Nicolas and up the final grinding ascent to Ans, was certainly one of his most memorable. As he said on Friday “I hope people will remember me as an attractive rider, someone who always tried to give his best.”

“When see Remco [Evenepoel, QuickStep-AlphaVinyl] winning Liège this year with an attack [from distance] on the Côte de la Redoute, it's something that makes me dream and really appreciate cycling.”

“I like this way of racing because this is the way I have raced, too. It’s nice for the public to have people who want to attack, and who are always happy to risk losing as well - because it’s always a risk if you go for it from that far out. But it is what makes sport nice.”

Once the curtain has fallen, beyond a celebratory, decidedly uncompetitive ‘race’ on the Cauberg next weekend, Gilbert said he does have a future planned. But as he added, "this is not the moment to communicate it. Be patient, and it will come."

Gilbert has said on multiple occasions that he is not interested in becoming a sports director, and he hinted strongly that he would be looking at a significant change of perspective in the months and years to come.

“I will look forward to a different life with different motivations and goals. It’s going to be completely different,” Gilbert said.

“The life of a cyclist is quite different, because for one thing you travel so much, you are never relaxed, you always have to train, you have the stress of expectations, you have to be always good. It’s a lot of stress.“

“In my last three years I was not at my highest level any more. I got COVID, I had my second crash and injured my knee, the team was not always easy so it was not three easy years. There were a lot of problems.”

“But I always did my best, and the most important thing is to finish now on a good level.”