Chirs Baldwin caught up with Vassili Davidenko at Mengoni, here is their conversation.

@##=#<2,R>@##=#Vassili Davidenko is a bad-ass bike racer. Starting in Tblisi, Georgia in 1983 at just 13 years old, he first rose to the top of the Soviet cycling world, training under the rigorous schedule of the world’s best amateur program. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 80s he had the opportunity to move first into the professional peloton in Europe, and then to America. He has ridden the Giro, the Vuelta, the Peace Race, the Spring Classics, the World Championships, the Olympics, and every conceivable criterium in America. He has been on the USSR national team, Seur, Navigare, Mapei and the Navigators, and at the ripe age of 36 is the reigning Athens Twilight Criterium champion.

At Mengoni last weekend he flatted after just a lap and a half, going no further than horse-shit alley a second time before pulling out. He changed out of wet cycling kit and stood under a tree and talked about his life on the bike.

“When I was 17 I won the Soviet Juniors championship and made it on to the Soviet National team. At 18 I went to the World Championships where I lost out to some Italian guy in a photo-finish. Two millimeters, not even the width of a tire. And what’s interesting is that in that break there were just five Italians and me. That race turned out pretty good.”

“After that the national team took me on as a young up-and-coming cyclist. The older-generation guys looked after me and I stayed on right up to the end. Right up to the time when the USSR ceased to exist and the trainers came out and said ‘Guys, you are free to go.’”

“I sat around for a while and thought, ‘Where exactly am I free to be going?’ What helped was that before I had competed in the amateur Giro d’Italia where I had some podium finishes, plus I won a one-day race in Italy, the Gran Premio Liberacion, which is like the ‘World Championships of Italy for Italians’. After that the Italian teams took a closer look at me and made the invite.”

“As long as I have been a professional I’ve been thinking of what it would take to duplicate the USSR national team. To create that kind of organization here you’d need millions of dollars. Millions and millions.”

“We spent 12 months at training camp. We started in November in the mountains at a camp where we would go running, go to the gym, go to the sauna and get therapeutic treatments. The organization was so powerful that we never wanted for anything. Whatever you needed, you got. I remember we’d go to breakfast, lunch and dinner and nobody said anything about diet. The tables were overflowing with every kind of food you could ask for, black caviar, anything. We couldn’t physically eat all that was provided to us on the tables. And that’s just the food.”

“Why do I bring this up? Now I have to watch my diet. But then? Then there was no such thing as a diet. But that’s all because we had four training sessions a day. Starting in the morning before breakfast we had exercises, you know, like push ups, running, stuff to get us warmed up in the winter. Then after breakfast we had our first session on the bike. We’d come back, clean up, rest, then either go out again on the bike or to the gym, then go swimming in the evening. During the winter we’d start with 60 or 70 guys to get ready for the big spring races, the Peace Race, the criterium championship, and by then there’d be just 25 left. It was all a matter of survival, of making the cut. Whoever couldn’t handle the load was dropped.”

“Those guys didn’t quit the sport, they just went back to their old teams. But to do that, to come back to your old team after the national squad, was a big step down. So everybody tried to stay on, do the workouts, rest, make the cut. The schedule was so intense that I never even had time to go out. No going out, no doing anything else. Just training and resting, you know.”

“Criteriums in the USSR were different from American criteriums in that here the last lap is the finish. In those races there were finish points every two laps, plus double points in the middle of the race. You rack up points every two laps and then the winner is the guy who got the most by the end of the race. You can imagine, sprinting every two laps for points, how hard that was. But I liked it.”

“Before the USSR collapsed I won the final national criterium championships. Then they had the CIS championships, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and I won that, too. They never held criterium championships again, so I am the last, first and final criterium champion of two countries, the USSR and the CIS.”

“Criteriums helped me a lot in America. I spent the middle part of my career in Italy, where there are none, and I sometimes sit back and think, ‘Man, I should have come straight to the States,’ because criteriums are more my style of racing. I really enjoy them, I grew up on them. Of course, I got some good experience in Italy, so I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But I really have a good time racing the crits.”

“Especially now. You know, we race five, six guys on the team in these criteriums, the crit squad, the guys I race with, and in the races we never even have to talk. We have it all worked out so well. The guys know what to do and how to do it, I know what to do and how to do it. The guys all support each other, work for each other. Everybody knows his role. If we attack, each one of us attacks in turn. It’s not always just one guy winding it up, tiring himself out. At the end the leadout is nearly automatic. It’s all perfect, all on a very high level. It’s all because the guys have done a lot of work together, have been together on the team for a long time and know each other. It’s all working out because we have won some really big races this year and we’re just getting stronger. Next year we’ll be even better.”

“Next year the team will be stronger, but I won’t. I think this will be my last season on the bike. You know, at 36 it’s time to give the younger riders room to race.”

“Athens this year was really something I wanted to win, especially because last year I had won, and I wanted to defend my title. There were only two of us at that race, me and Siro, and he really helped me out. You could say that he did a perfect job with the lead out. I sprinted at the end and the rest of the pack was way behind me. We were able to use the other teams, like Toyota and Health Net, who had bigger squads and a natural advantage with more racers in the field, and beat them in the end.”

“Athens is a crazy race. It starts at like 10 or 11 at night. It’s a one kilometer lap in downtown Athens, a college town. There are so many students who come to watch the race, they are just everywhere. The bars and restaurants are all open, there’s VIP area for the riders before the race. The organization is at a very high level, so the entire race course is closed, nobody can come across. They put barriers so it’s safe, which is really important for the riders.”

“It’s a fast race. This year they made it a bit longer, but last year after five laps it was so fast I thought, ‘I quit.’ It was just so fast and so hard for me. Single-file the entire time. It’s one of the fastest criteriums in America. You start and there isn’t a moment when you can rest. You get up out of the saddle and pedal and sit back down and pedal, and that’s it. The laps are so small that it feels like you are on a big velodrome. Other crits, like Charlotte, are longer. I think that one is three kilometers. But this is just 1k, so you are full-out the entire time.”

“This is my last year on the bike, but it’s America, so there’s always something in the future. I have my coaching program, which I’ve been doing for years, but now I’ll be able to spend more time on, and I’ll still be around my team. These guys are my friends, and I need their support as much as they need mine.”