‘This is probably my last race’ – Zdenek Stybar nears exit at Tour of Guangxi

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, but Zdeněk Štybar has been around this game long enough to know that a man rarely gets to choose the manner of his exit. There will be no grand send-off for the rider who made such a smooth transition from winning cyclo-cross world titles to chasing Classics victories a little over a decade ago. Barring a late, late reprieve, his final race as a professional rider on the road will be thousands of miles from home at the Tour of Guangxi. So it goes.

“It’s not easy to end your career in China, far away from your family,” Štybar told Cyclingnews in Beihai on Friday. “But on the other hand, I’m trying not to think too much about it. I’m just racing here and I’m doing what I have to do. I would still like to do some cyclo-cross races this winter, but on the road, I think that’s it.”

Štybar’s affability has been a calling card since he first turned up in Belgium as a young man and started beating the home riders at their own game in the muddied fields of Flanders, eventually joining them on the road after his compatriot Zdeněk Bakala started backing the QuickStep team in 2011.

Even though the last three years, blighted by injury and illness, have not been kind, Štybar’s perma-smile remained intact as he talked Cyclingnews through his ill-starred season with Jayco-Alula, which was itself interrupted by double iliac artery surgery.

Jayco’s signing of Caleb Ewan this week means that their roster for 2024 is now complete, while the confusion engendered by his former QuickStep team’s proposed and then shelved merger with Jumbo-Visma only complicated his own, forlorn hunt for a contract.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t re-sign as there is no place on our team,” Štybar said. “And then with the situation of the past weeks with such uncertainty about teams, I think this is probably my last race. Of course, my manager was still speaking to teams, but after all those surgeries, after my performances and my age, nobody is really interested.”

Surgery

Štybar’s last victory came at the 2020 Vuelta a San Juan, when he powered to a canny win on the Villicúm motor-racing circuit. After landing Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and E3 Harelbeke the previous year, he looked poised for another Spring at the core of QuickStep’s cobbled Classics squad, but that momentum ground to a halt when pro cycling went into hiatus during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Once racing resumed, Štybar was beset by ill fortune, and he struggled to build up a head of steam again. His 2021 Classics campaign was ended by surgery for cardiac arrhythmia. Every time he felt he had turned a corner, a COVID-19 infection would act as a roadblock. Maddeningly, he contracted the virus for the fourth time in August, just when his career was on the line.

Cruellest of all, that latest bout of COVID-19 came after Štybar had finally discovered – and remedied – the biggest impediment to his fitness in recent years. After a decidedly low-key Classics campaign, Štybar was diagnosed with iliac artery endofibrosis, and he underwent surgery on both legs in late April.

“The Spring season was as bad as it could be, but at least I knew the reason why afterwards. I think I had the problem with the iliac arteries progressively over the last three years because that’s also when my performance started to go down step by step,” Štybar said. “I didn’t know why that was happening, because it’s not that I was not motivated or something. Now at least I know why. For the last year, I was basically racing on one leg.

“Afterwards you think to yourself, ‘Why didn’t we check for that before?’ But the thing is, I always had some problem in that period. I had the heart operation and then I had COVID four times, so there was always some explanation for why I wasn’t in top shape, and there were still some good races in between, moments where I thought the shape was coming.”

In 2022, Štybar’s final season with QuickStep, he was able to get through his training load without undue issues only to find himself left behind once he pinned on a race number. Poring over the power data after each race, he was at a loss to understand why he was being dropped. The belated diagnosis this past Spring came as something of a relief, but it also left him with a choice to make. He opted not to lay down arms right away.

“I decided I don’t want to stop my career on such a low, so I had the surgery on both legs,” said Štybar, who would spend miss four months of racing during his convalescence, returning at the Arctic Race of Norway. He entered the final phase of the season fully aware that he was racing to save his career, and that COVID-19 infection after the Renewi Tour only added to the sense of desperation.

“I had to force things a little bit, I had to try to keep on training after that,” Štybar said. “But the more I tried, the worse it was, because I had no time to recover. I did three or four hours and the day after it felt like I’d finished the Tour de France. It didn’t really work.”

While Štybar plans to line up in some cyclo-cross events this winter, he doesn’t envisage returning to that circuit on a full-time basis. “Without a real team, it’s really tough in cyclo-cross and I don’t like to do things just halfway,” said Štybar, who won three world titles in the discipline during a dual-pronged career that perhaps provided inspiration for Messrs. Van Aert and Van der Poel.

On the road, Štybar’s successes include Strade Bianche, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and E3 Harelbeke, as well as podium finishes at Paris-Roubaix and a stage of the Tour de France. Asked to pick a highlight from his career, however, the 37-year-old opted for the camaraderie of his decade at QuickStep rather than a line from his own palmarès. The curtain will come down discreetly this week in southern China, but the memories from thunderous afternoons on the cobbles are what will endure.

“That’s something that stays locked in the memory – the great group of people I could work with,” Štybar said. “That’s something I can never forget.”