Styby has become 14th at the world championship on the road in Bergen, in Norway. The title went to Peter Sagan for the third year in a row. The Slovakian was the fastest of a small group.
“Probably a lot of people were thinking: why did we start to ride with Belgium? But the explanation is very easy. I was working hard for this race, so we wanted to take control over the race, be in front, be focused and be motivated. I also wanted to get the maximum out of every rider from our team. And we did get the most from all of them.”
“Josef Cerny did an amazing job on the head of the peloton, riding together with Julien Vermote, who was pulling all Tour de France long. Black, as we call Cerny, did great until the moment that the Dutch guys speed up the bunch, and of course, it was too much for him at that time. He is used to ride Czech races. I know him from the national championship this summer, where we were in the attack together. So i knew he was capable to do this job until kilometer 180. And he did. He was very strong.”
“Jan Barta and Petr Vakoc didn’t have their day, so we couldn’t count on them. It made our day a little bit more difficult, because their job was to cover some attacks and help us to stay in front of the bunch, also in the last 50 kilometers of the race. Roman Kreuziger was amazing and doing his absolute best. It was pity that he was involved in the crash at the bottom of the climb in the last lap. Otherwise he could make an excellent race.”
“Jiri Polnicky was training very hard with us in Mallorca, so I knew he would stay with us until the final started and he did that. He was great and he deserves a big thanks too. So, that was it for our 6 man squad. For sure some people had doubts when we were in front of the peloton instead of hiding away in the bunch. But we didn’t, because we were motivated and focused. So we just went for it.”
“I had a bad moment in the race between kilometers 160 and 200. But in the last 40 kilometers I was quiet good again. In the sprint, I was in the wheel of Sagan, but I didn’t have his legs unfortunately. For me the sprint downhill was also not any advantage. If it was in the other direction, I could do better, but that’s only IF…”
“I can’t regret anything. We did our best, but I didn’t have simply the legs for the sprint. It’s a disappointment, but that’s sport. I would be more disappointment if I could stand up today out of bed and feeling 20 years old again, and not 100 years old, as I felt this morning. And it was definitely not from the few beers we had last night :-).”
“I also would like to thank the Czech national team staff. It’s always a low budget action and everybody is working over hours and is more tired then the riders. It’s also really nice, because it’s the same as we had it when we were juniors. So it’s kind of back to reality, so we can realize again how good and professional we have it in our own teams. Thank you for that. It were some amazing days with a lot of fun.”
