Stefan Küng might be known for his time-trialling skills, but he’s increasingly becoming a force to be reckoned with in one-day races too. Speaking to Stefan while he was on training camp in Spain in December last year, he spoke about the realities of racing at the top level, and how difficult it is to win, both in time-trialling and the classics. Close, but not close enough, is a familiar situation for the Swiss who finally broke the string of almost-but-not-quites last summer at La Vuelta a Espana, where he took his first Grand Tour victory in the individual time-trial, his specialist discipline.
We talked about his special year in 2024, with the Paris Olympics and a home World Championships in Zurich to prepare for, along with that long overdue victory at the Vuelta, and his hopes for the Classics, in a Q&A produced for Cyclist Magazine, which you read here.
Beyond these issues though, Stefan had plenty more to say, about developing his new Wilier machine, team time-trials, and his time with Groupama-FDJ, as well as his amazing fan club. There was too much good stuff to be left on the cutting room floor, so here is the continuation of our conversation.
Man and machine versus time
We began, of course, with time-trialling. Twice European champion and winner of several stages at World Tour level, time-trial victories at World Championships and Olympics have thus far eluded the Swiss.
“In Tokyo, I missed out on a medal by 0.4 second. It was haunting me, in a way; next to the Grand Tour victory, one of the only things missing in my armour is a medal at the Olympic Games,” he said, when we were reflecting on the pressure he put on himself ahead of the 2024 season that he subsequently describes as leading him to question, whether he was really enjoying the sport anymore.
From a fan perspective, Küng is often perceived as a nearly-man – a reputation he continues to uphold in 2025, where he came close to solo-ing to victory at Omloop Nieuwsblad following a shrewd attack 8 kilometres from the finish line – but his pragmatism in the face of these perceived ‘misses’ flips the disappointment around. “In the end, when you miss out closely, it means that you were really, really good,” he notes.
In terms of pressure, he reflects on the way in which the modern obsession with details can detract from the experience of just taking in the moment of “privilege” to be riding in the top races on the planet and "living the dream". He describes the vicious cycle of asking: "Did I do all my homework, aerodynamically, did I test everything that was possible, is my material on point, and so on," and contrasts it the mindset he is trying to move towards. "Now, I need to be relaxed, have confidence in what I can do, enjoy it and just put it all out there.”
This new focus on enjoyment and the bigger picture will not detract from Küng’s desire to perform however. We discuss the different elements of performance, from training to nutrition to gear, and I ask which of these he believes have the greatest impact on the time-trial.
“For sure, the technological improvement plays its part: the bikes, helmet, skinsuit. Speaking [in terms of] aerodynamics, like the main resistance come from the athlete itself. So we try to look at the whole picture and say, Okay, what's important? Sure, you can push the pedals, but to be able to push the pedals in an aerodynamic position, you’ve got to be flexible, have a strong core. So this all plays into the whole thing, going fast in a TT.
“It's interesting, but it's also challenging, because there's so many things to look at now, and it's not easy to not get lost in this. We're all looking for the marginal gains, and by focusing on the marginal gains, sometimes I feel like major parts of performance don't get as much as attention as they should."
I asked about his role as an experienced time-triallist in getting the best out of the new machines being developed by Groupama-FDJ's current bike supplier, Wilier.
"I was really pleased when they delivered the bike," Stefan confirms. "I had the chance already with Lapierre to be involved in this development of a time-trial bike. Now I was able to do it again with Willier, and it's really nice. I enjoyed a lot. You join forces, you work together. I was the first person to ride the prototype. The engineers, they make a proposal, then I ride it, I give my feedback, and then they decide if they want to include it or not and that's really interesting, because, you also get to know the processes of building a bike, it's not that easy. It's not that you push on the button somewhere, and ta-da you have a bike; it's so much work, like so many different versions that and how it's evolving.
"If they judge it good enough, they make a 3D print, they go to the wind tunnel, then they see it's reacting differently, and so on and so on, until I get presented with first rideable prototype. Once I join in, it’s actually quite late in the process. It's more for the details, because in the end, aerodynamics is kind of tricky. It's not always what looks the fastest is the fastest. So it's their work to do this challenging calculations and trials. It's actually an algorithm, so it's not a sketch that somebody starts drawing. So, like all forms, tubes, how they are placed, one to each other. It's one big calculation in an algorithm."
How do you want to beat a team like that?
While Stefan’s prowess against the clock is undeniable, the early days of his career as part of BMC Racing saw him line up in a formidable team time-trial unit which experienced great success, at the back end of an era in which the discipline featured more regularly in stage races. Recently, the event has fallen out of favour, featuring just a couple of times a season, but with the recent announcement that the Tour de France would include a team time-trial for the first time in its history, it seems the tide may perhaps be turning, in this regard.
I asked Stefan what it was like to lead his team in an area which these days, is not prioritised when it comes to training. He visibly lights up, when he’s talking about his experiences.
“When I came into BMC they were, at the time, one of the best, if not the best, team in team time trialling,” Stefan reminisces. “In one year we won every team time trial except worlds, where we came second. The whole team was loaded with absolute specialists of this discipline. We knew we had a team that could win or would fight for the victory, and I can't erase this feeling from my memory. Now, you get back into this discipline, and it’s difficult to win.
"I don't want to take anything away from my teammates, but all the teams have the stacked line-up that we used to have at BMC, you know, like at the time when we did the World Championships in Richmond, it was like, Rohan Dennis, Taylor Phinney, myself, Quinziato, Oss, Dillier… like, how do you want to beat a team like that?
"So now I’m in this coaching role, all the experience I have in this discipline, and we try to get it on to the other guys. We have some new recruits also in the team, from other teams, where there was not this culture of team time trialing and this culture starts in training and has been lost also over the years, because there were less and less team time trials.
"Like 2016/17, we had like 17, 18, time-trials a year. Every major stage race had a team time-trial, and since they stripped the team time-trial at Worlds for trade teams it's become way less. And so again, it's up to me to share my experience, to adjust it, and it's really important to ride already now, in December, all together. We're not gonna have a lot of sessions actually, from here to Paris-Nice, for example. So, it's time to work on it, when everybody's present and everybody's together."
Team time-trials (and tribulations)
I observe that it’s probably not at the top of his teammates’ list of ‘fun things to do in training.’ His enthusiasm suggests that he disagrees.
“If you’ve never raced to win a team time trial, then you don't know what the standard is,” Stefan states. “For me, it's never fast enough. We will finish our run and I’ll say 'yeah, but guys, we’ve got to go faster' and they're like 'but I'm on the limit,' and I try to explain to them, it's not necessarily the faster you go, the harder it is. That's actually a little bit paradoxical about team time-trial. I did team time-trials in the past, where it didn't hurt that much, because it was so smooth, there was no acceleration or deceleration, like we always kept the rhythm, and the rhythm was just super high. Sure, it's physically demanding and it hurt, but it hurts way more if the speed always varies. Like, if one we have one rider slowing down the other one, you got to pick up the pace. Then it's really suffering. So you try to get it as smooth possible, to be as fast as possible.”
The topic seems to have really fired Stefan’s imagination and he returns to reminiscing about better experiences he's enjoyed working in the discipline.
“You have to be able to experience this once to know what it feels like of just this super smooth team, everything is dialled in," he enthuses. "And for me, also, I’ve got to back-pedal a little bit, because I had this feeling so many times, and I'm always looking for it, but it's not easy to achieve. It was a lot of work over a lot of years in the BMC racing team to be able to get to this level. Or when we won the mixed relay with the Swiss team, with Stefan Bissegger and Mauro Schmid, we were all doing track, so we all had this feeling, and we did it three years in a row, and we got better and better each year. And when we were in Glasgow, we all three came to the finish line and we nailed it. It was just such a smooth unit. If you get this feeling it's super, super nice, but it's a lot of work, and you cannot achieve this in one session.
“If they would give a bigger standard to this discipline, teams would work on it more and for us, it will become more fun because we would get better in it. But if you only have one team time-trial in the whole season, then you always balance it like, 'How big is the effort you want to put in for this one day?' For example, you put the team together that's probably gonna do Paris-Nice and all the others also do it, but they know they might never do a team time-trial the whole year.”
Perhaps, with the announcement of the team time-trial for the 2026 Tour de France, Stefan’s prayers might in some way be granted.
You've always got to be there
We go on to talk about Stefan's other major talent outside of his skill against the clock - classics racing, in which he's frequently to be seen at the pointy end in recent seasons.
"As under-23 rider, I won races other than time trials, like nice one-day races, or even smaller GCs," Stefan recalls. "When I passed professional with BMC, it was at the time, one of, if not the best team in the world, star-studded and packed with super good riders. So you kind of fit into a role. I had my base quality, which was time trial, which allowed me to, like, still win races and really have my chance. But in all the other departments, I was put into a role, which was normal. I mean, we had Greg van Avermaet on the on team, who in 2017 won every classic except De Ronde and it's normal that you work for the guy, because he's the best."
He goes on to talk about taking the initiative to throw himself back into one-day racing when BMC was winding up, when Stefan was 25. He drew on inspiration from his leader as he re-launched himself in this role. "That's one thing that Greg van Avermaet always told me: 'Look, you just have to be able to always be in the finals of these races. And then when it becomes natural, then you can think about winning these one-day races or being on the podium of them. You always got to be there. And those opportunities will come.”
I ask what he believe the key is, to winning a one-day race, where he feels he may have “one chance in 10 on a day where I can beat them” and his reply is succinct: “I don’t know, and if I did I wouldn't tell you!"
He expands on the reasons why it’s so difficult to strike the balance between going all out for victory, and balancing the demands of team management in this current day and age, of UCI points and relegation.
“I think, to be able to win, you don't have to be afraid to lose. Which I would say is harder than ever in professional cycling,” he states. “You know, like when I turned professional, nobody was talking about points. Nobody really cared. There were enough World Tour licenses for the teams that had the budget and the will to do it. I remember, they even had to force the team IAM to step up to the World Tour, because otherwise they will not have had enough teams. Nowadays you have 25 even more teams going after these 18 World Tour licenses. So you have this big competition already in that field.
“And then also for the teams, it's the only way to really measure between all these races like, where do we stand in comparison to the others, it’s also the World Tour ranking. So they fix objectives. Like, we want to be the top eight, the top six. You feel they're in a tricky situation, like, they want you to win the races, but they also want you to grab as many points as possible. So if you always race like, ‘yeah, I don't give a shit if I lose because I race for the win’, and you lose eight times and you have nothing in the end they will challenge you and say, like, maybe you've got to think about racing differently, you know. So it's not that easy. It's maybe harder than ever to race like that.”
Evolving together
Despite his strong start to his World Tour career with BMC Racing, Stefan made the switch to Groupama-FDJ in 2019, and has remained there ever since. I’m intrigued to discover what he enjoys about the team, and how settled he is there.
“When BMC stopped, I was looking for a team where I could get opportunities, which was very professional on the sport side of the spectrum, which I found in Groupama-FDJ,” Stefan says. “We’re evolving together. I’m able to improve every year, the team is able to improve every year. I feel like we’re one of teams who has a very high competence, performance-wise. And this is why I feel very good here. To me what matters most is to have everything I need to be performant, like, material-wise. And nowadays, we've got so many data, you need competent people who are able to analyse these data and pull conclusions out of them and adapt it to your training.
“And then you also need a place where you feel happy, where you feel good, because in the end, you're spending more time in the team than you do at home. So you need to feel very comfortable to go to races, and training camps with the team. And I've got it all here.
“We're all moving together, and as long as we do, I feel really happy, but I also know that you always got to keep challenging yourself. That's also what I do. So I have a different coach for example, coming up to this season, six years of the same coach. Also, for example, we had a change of material last year Willier coming aboard, this year we have a new wheel supplier. The team is on their side constantly working to evolve, to improve, to challenge themselves. And me, personally, I try to do the same with having different approaches, without taking a step back; keeping what works, but always trying something new. I think it's very important as an athlete to always keep challenging yourself.”
Another card to play
Despite his clear talent for one-day racing, it feels pertinent to ask whether time-trialling will remain in Stefan’s heart or if perhaps he will reinvent himself entirely as a classics man and move away from the discipline, similar to the kind of rebranding Victor Campanaerts has moved toward in recent seasons.
“It's kind of my life insurance,” he jokes. “You know, most of my races are that I won are time-trials. So I want to keep this ability to be able to do that. And in the end, as long as I work on my time trial skills, I also physically have to remain at the top of my game, and I always try to grow my strengths and work on my weaknesses.
“So for example, my punch or my sprint has been one of my weaknesses in the past. And I try every year to work a little bit on it, like this year we have even more different approach on it, about which I'm really excited to see the results. I showed in the Vuelta already that, yeah, I might not be the best sprinter in the peloton, but if the occasion arises, I can do good, which also gave me another confidence boost. Maybe this could be for the future in terms of how I approach a sprint of a big group, like in the classics, and if the day comes, I have another card to play.”
"It's incredible what they do. I'm just lucky that they chose me."
I can’t let Stefan go without a nod to his loyal fanclub, the Stefan Küng Freunde, who not only follow the Swiss rider from race to race supporting him, but take a giant inflatable version of him to the roadside, to help them stand out from the crowd. Oh and don’t forget the song. I ask Stefan how he feels about their loyal support.
“Yeah, it's great. I honestly think I have a great fan club, probably one of the best one could ask for. They're so supportive and motivated. They're always happy and they're always there, and they don't ask anything of me. Like, they are always very reserved, and they don't want to interrupt my preparation coming up to the race. I try to say hello and stop quickly for a photo with them. And they're like, “Yeah, don't worry. Like, focus on your performance, we're here wherever, if you have time for us or not. We’re just here because we like to support you.” And that's really cool. And, yeah, they're very creative, with songs and their merchandise. It's incredible what they do. And I'm just lucky that they chose to choose me. It’s cool.”
I concluded the conversation by determining what Stefan's favourite race to ride is, and the one he'd most like to win. The answer is the same for both: "Paris-Roubaix." As for the way he makes the most of time off the bike, Stefan says: "When I'm at home, it’s spending time with my family, with my son and my wife. It sounds maybe kind of cheesy, but it's the reality. It's what matters the most to me, next to the sport."
Thanks to Groupama-FDJ and to Stefan for his time.
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