THOUGHT FOR FOOD
When Janez Brajkovic won the U23 World Championships time trial in 2004 he put Slovenia on the professional cycling map. And he did it by beating the favourite of the day in Riva del Garda, Italy - Thomas Dekker - as well as Vincenzo Nibali. It was an eye-catching and worldclass performance.
There had been Slovenian riders in the WorldTour peloton before Brajkovic; Gorazd Štangelj, Andrej Hauptman, and Matej Mugerli for instance, but none of them had won a world championship. Hauptman almost did, in 2001, when he finished third in the Worlds road race in Lisbon behind Óscar Freire and Paolo Bettini. Brajkovic’s rainbow jersey - although at U23 level - raised the bar.
His win didn’t pass unnoticed, and the year after, he signed with the most prominent team in the world: Lance Armstrong’s Discovery Channel. The young Slovenian was only 22 years old and had already been described as one of his generation’s most promising riders.
But even in those bright days, dark clouds were already looming on the Slovenian’s horizon. The year after winning his title, Brajkovic experienced the first episodes of what would prove to be a longlasting eating disorder: bulimia.
“It just happened,” says Brajkovic over a Zoom call while at a training camp in Dubai.
“At that time, I was a very skinny rider
