Slovakian team masseur standing in for bike race

World cycling championship favorites Remco Evenepoel, Isaac Del Toro and Paul Seixas are racing in Montreal against a Slovakian masseur after the country’s cyclists were all forced to pull out of the race.

Vladimir Kovacik, a 28-year-old former cyclist, has not raced since 2017 when he finished 32nd in his national time-trial championships.

However, he is to be on the start line in Montreal for the 273.4km race against the best riders in the world.

That is because Slovakia’s original three-man line-up of Lukas Kubis, Matthias Schwarzbacher and Martin Svrcek all had to pull out at the last minute.

And with Nora Jencusova, the only Slovakian qualified for Saturday’s women’s race, having had to end her season early due to injury, the country faced the prospect of fielding no one in either the senior men’s or women’s race.

It could have cost them ranking points.

“It is important for Slovakia to have a minimum representation in the elite category to maintain the ranking and points positions required for future World Championships, European Championships and Olympic Games,” the Slovak federation said on social media. “Although such a solution is not ideal and it is not a decision that we would take easily, in the current situation it is necessary to preserve the starting possibilities for prospective Slovak cyclists.”

Amongst those is Viktoria Chladonova, 19, who won the junior women’s world title on Thursday.

With so little time to go before the race, the Slovak delegation deemed it impractical to try to call up another active cyclist, so they turned to someone already with the team in Canada: masseur Kovacik.

“We believe that people will understand this extraordinary situation,” the federation said.