Track Champions League Leader Claudio Imhof - 'I have nothing to lose, I’m calm, everything is a bonus'
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Published 01/12/2022 at 07:39 GMT
After experiencing a horrendous crash in training back in March, there were times when Claudio Imhof thought he might never ride a bike again. That he is now leading the Track Champions League men’s endurance standings after three rounds has therefore come as an enormous shock to him. An aggressive rider with a big engine, he heads for the final weekend in London “calm” and with “nothing to lose”.
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Nobody is more surprised to see Claudio Imhof at the top of the 2022 Track Champions League standings after three rounds than the rider himself.
“If someone said to me this summer [I’d be here] I would never have believed them,” he tells Eurosport from his home near Lake Constance, in north-east Switzerland, a few days before the final weekend of racing in London.
That’s not for a lack of talent, by any means. On March 1, the 32 year-old suffered a horrendous crash while aerodynamic testing on his home track in Grenchen.
He suffered a traumatic brain injury, losing consciousness for about five hours and only waking up in the hospital.
The first couple of weeks afterwards were, he says, “really, really bad”. Imhof experienced severe headaches, nausea and dizziness.
Although he describes the accident as “an unlucky situation which should not have happened”, in the end, he says, “I was very lucky”. He mentions other well-known examples of big crashes, such as Kristina Vogel, who suffered serious spinal injuries and was paralysed after a training crash.
It was far from guaranteed that Imhof would return to cycling.
Now, he says, “I'm very happy that I am back on the bike. There were a lot of days or weeks when maybe I [thought I] will not be able to come back, but I always found some motivation or some belief to make it work.”
Keen to return to racing, to begin with he pushed his body too far, too fast, and tried to do too much too soon.
“I did the Tour de Suisse as my first race, which was way too early,” he says. “I had to take a step back for another month or so to really let my body rest and I came back again for the European Championships in Munich, which was also too early."
The World Championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines last month was “the first time I felt clear in my head".
Imhof was excited to return to the Track Champions League because “it gives me the opportunity to race every week at the highest level possible".
Despite finishing a perfectly respectable seventh in both the scratch and elimination races in Mallorca, he was disappointed with how he started the series because “I was already feeling good there".
Upon analysis, after so long away from the track, he considers it a case of needing to tune up, find his rhythm again, and remember what it was like to ride in the bunch again.
“It was like being brand new to be back in a peloton.”
The big difference between this year’s TCL and last, he says, are that “the races are more intense”, pointing to the fact that only one of the scratch races last year - the penultimate one, which he won - did not end in a bunch sprint.
In contrast, not a single men’s scratch - so far - has finished that way.
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“It’s just full gas racing from the gun and that's what I like,” says Imhof.
Before the series began he promises that he “never thought about the general classification” and came into the series “hoping to do a lucky punch like I did last year in London".
Only when he was on his way to the airport after the Berlin round, feeling a little down having come close to taking the win in both races, did he notice that he had risen up the overall rankings to third.
He says it did not alter his approach in Paris: “I still took every race, one after the other.”
Overthinking, concerning himself with what his GC rivals are up to, would be to deny his instincts and what got him there in the first place.
“I'm the type of rider who will always ride races very offensively,” he says. “And I think I have good instincts.”
When Eurosport tells him that reminds us of Mark Stewart, who said something similar after the opening round, Imhof agrees that “we are a very similar type of riders. We have the same racing mentality.”
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That doesn’t mean he will be paying no attention to what his main rivals are doing: “I really want to try to keep racing as I did the last few rounds. Because it's worked really well.”
He compares that with the approach of the Canadian pair, Mathias Guillemette and Dylan Bibic who "pay more attention to who's in the front and who's not, trying to do a move together".
That was certainly the case in Paris, as the scratch world champion and then overall leader skipped off the front of the bunch in the opening laps, with neither achieving a particularly strong result and Guillemette ultimately relinquishing the lead in the competition.
Asked if he would rather keep the jersey to the end of the series or win one of the remaining four races, Imhof says, as you would expect “it would be nice to achieve both".
His scratch victory on the Friday last year in London was, he says, “one of my nicest wins in my career", as well as proving invaluable to his motivation after the accident.
“When I had bad days, I think I looked at this video like 50 times.”
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'What a move, chapeau!' - Imhof solos to victory in scratch race
“It's one of the of the nicest tracks for me in the world,” he says, referring to the Lee Valley Velodrome by its unofficial name of “the pringle".
He tells Eurosport that he loves the British fans “because they cheer for everyone. In Paris, they only cheer for the French guy. In London, they like it if someone tries something, as I did last year.”
Imhof can even now hear the roar of appreciation as he accelerated off the front with seven laps to go.
“They really got behind me,” he says. “I think that can give you something extra.”
Imhof isn’t too concerned about the back-to-back nights of racing. “I think I’ve got the fitness to survive two days in a row,” he says, suggesting it could even be to his advantage “compared to riders who are more explosive or still young".
One thing Imhof has learned from 2021, and that should play into his favour, is not to let his form slip between TCL weekends.
“I said to myself before the league started that I want to keep the training rolling between rounds. Last year, I could really feel how I lost fitness because you travel a lot, you're tired, you don't train as you should.
"This year, I really tried to keep it up to a maximum. I always trained Sunday afternoon, Sunday night in the gym, did some long rides last Monday, Tuesday, and did some specific work.”
To take the overall endurance title would be for Imhof “the most important point of my career” but he refuses to think too much about it, or allow the prospect to cause him stress.
After all those “really tough, tough days and weeks and months, I have nothing to lose. I’m calm. Everything is a bonus.”
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After a great debut season, the UCI Track Champions League is back for season two, with Laura Kenny joining the party. You can watch it all live and on demand on discovery+. We also have extensive coverage across eurosport.com.
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