After a busy season that left him with a much-improved résumé but also a broken femur and second career Tour de France DNF, Mathias Frank is enjoying some time off. Earlier this year, his first with IAM Cycling, Frank landed in the GC Top 10 of five straight stage races, claiming runner-up honors in the Critérium International, Bayern Rundfahrt, and Tour de Suisse, and also racking up a few stage wins as well during the excellent run of performances from March to late June. The 27-year-old seemed primed for a successful return to the Tour de France, a race he’d abandoned in his 2010 debut due to a broken thumb and torn thigh muscle sustained in a crash in the prologue. However, Frank’s 2014 Tour campaign went awry on Stage 7, when he was one of a hapless bunch of riders who hit the deck hard inside the final kilometer. The crash left him with a broken left femur, an appointment with a surgeon, and another DNF in the world’s biggest race. Frank spent two months away from competition recovering before returning for a few one-day races to close out his 2014 racing program while getting a bit of strength back in his legs. Now one month removed from the season, he is (finally) nearly back to full health.
“From the femur, I don’t feel anything anymore. I don’t have any pain or anything. There was a little imbalance at the last test I did, so I’m still working with the physio on it, but I’m sure I will be at 100% pretty soon again,” he told VeloHuman in a phone interview this week.
As he takes those last few steps towards full recovery, Frank is able to look back on his season in a positive light. As frustrating as his Tour de France journey was, he still managed to put together an excellent first half of the year, which Frank acknowledges was “definitely” the best spring in his career. “Normally it always took me a bit longer to get into good shape. This year I was really happy to open the account early in the Critérium [International] and from then on, I did some pretty good racing the whole spring. So it was the best first part of the season for me,” he said.
Frank joined IAM Cycling this season after several years in the red and black of BMC. Coming off a fine 2013, the Swiss rider was a promising addition to the Swiss team that was making several big improvements at the time, also bringing in star all-rounder Sylvain Chavanel. One might expect the season’s high hopes to have come with high pressure, but Frank says that he did not feel pressured to perform, at least not by anyone other than himself. “It’s something you always put on yourself, the pressure. I don’t feel any pressure from the team, it’s more my expectations that I have. . . . I think the expectations that I have are more than what the team has! The team really doesn’t put any pressure on me,” he said.
Frank’s own motivation and the low-pressure team atmosphere contributed to a major step forward in results. Frank attributed his early season success to a “combination of different things,” among them, a new role in a new team: “The environment, the role that I have, that I can go for myself. I think I already felt in BMC the last couple of years, 2012 and 2011, I could see that I was always a competitor. I couldn’t really turn that into results but from the numbers from training I knew that I was quite close to being where I was this year. So it wasn’t really a surprise—I think that there were a lot of things coming into place.”
The multiple podium performances in the spring raised Frank’s expectations even higher for the Tour, but when his run at the main goal of his season came to a sudden end in a heap of riders and mangled bikes near the finish line in Nancy, it was a psychological blow. Still, Frank seems to have already put the frustrating Tour behind him. “For sure, I was super disappointed,” he said. “I had a big chance going for the Tour in the really good shape that I had after the Tour of Switzerland, but at the end . . . that’s how it is. Crashes, they happen. You can’t do anything but get up and try it again next year. What also helped me this year was that I became a father in June, during the Tour de Suisse, so when I was home, there was something else, there was some distraction, with my daughter. I didn’t really think too much about it. I think I just took it as destiny, as a ‘try it next year’ again.”
After crash-marred races that resulted in DNFs in both of his two career Tour appearances, Frank is hoping (in fact, he seems confident) that the third time will be the charm. “After two bad experiences, the third time it’s really going to work out. I really believe in this and that’s how I see it. That’s two bad crashes in my whole career, and they were at the Tour de France. So for sure, I’d say it’s sad, but it could happen anywhere. I’ll just have to try it again and at one point it will work,” he explained.
Frank and his squad are currently awaiting word from the UCI License Commission regarding their application to join the WorldTour in 2015, but various sources have reported that the team will likely make the cut. Thanks to strong seasons by Frank and Sylvain Chavanel, IAM Cycling was among the best of the Pro Continental squads in the peloton in terms of results this season, but joining the WorldTour ranks is no small step up. A commitment to a full calendar of top-level races, including all three Grand Tours and all five grueling Monuments, is quite an effort for any squad, and many teams have struggled in their first year at the highest level. Frank acknowledges that if IAM Cycling is, in fact, given a WorldTour bid for the 2015 season, it will not be easy. At the moment, he is realistic about what the promotion might mean, but also hopeful that rider development will pay off. “I think it will be a big challenge for sure. It’s a tough schedule now with all these race days, with three Grand Tours. But I think it was good last year to do two Grand Tours, for the team. We still have a lot of young guys and I think for them, they’re developing and next year if we go WorldTour, the team should be ready for it,” he said. “It’s a big challenge, and maybe it takes another one or two years for some guys to adapt but in general I think we have a good squad with all the new guys that are coming at the end here, and we should be ready, if we move up to the WorldTour, to perform well there.”
IAM Cycling added a few more “young guys” this transfer season, with up-and-comers Clément Chevrier and Sondre Holst Enger among a list of new arrivals that also includes climber Jarlinson Pantano and time trialing talent Stef Clement. On the other hand, the team lost experienced riders Thomas Löfkvist, Johann Tschopp, and Gustav Larsson. Frank knows that the veteran presence will not be easy to replace, but he likes what he sees in the team’s signings. “We lost some experienced guys . . . some pretty good pros. But I’m positive that the young guys will step up, the guys that we’re going to get. We’ll have to see, but I think in general we’ll be at least as good as this year,” he said.
Mathias Frank’s own plans for 2015 are not yet set in stone, but he has his sights on the one-week stage races (like the Tours de Romandie and Suisse in which he’s had recent success) and especially the Tour de France, with a third run at cycling’s main event as his central target this upcoming season. “Next year, it will be all about the Tour. I really want to go to France in good shape again and try to get a Top 10, so I think we’re going to build the program around the Tour and start from there, but it’s not really decided yet so I can’t really give details. I think it will be less racing than this year for sure, but focusing on the Tour de France,” Frank said. “The Tour is going to be the biggest goal. . . . At the end it’s the Tour de France that really counts.”
Frank has plenty of reasons to be optimistic about his major goal for next season, given the way he performed at several WorldTour and 2.HC races in 2014. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have to look very hard to find reasons to be cautious about targeting a race that has given him a broken femur and broken thumb in his two career appearances—but Frank seems to have put those unpleasant experiences behind him. That’s good news for IAM Cycling. With a WorldTour promotion (and its requirement to ride all three Grand Tours) a very real possibility, the Swiss team will be counting on their Swiss GC leader to deliver in 2015.
-Dane Cash
Photo by Georges Ménager.
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