"I could no longer pedal" - back problems completely ruin Ignatas Konovalovas' farewell season among pros

Ignatas Konovalovas announced the end of his career already last winter, but still hoped to enjoy riding bikes in the bunch this year. However back injury halted those plans as early as in January and soon it became clear that the 38-year-old won't add any racing kilometers to his record. Still, he can look back at a great career spent mostly as a reliable domestique with one grand tour stage win (Giro d'Italia 2009) to his name.

"If my career were a glass, I would feel like I had filled it all the way," Konovalovas evaluates in an interview on team website. "I am sure I have done 100% of what I could have done. I spent seventeen years as a pro, including nine with Groupama - FDJ. I think that’s really not bad. After everything I’ve experienced, all the people I’ve met along the way, I’m proud and happy to be ending my career. The choice was already made last winter anyway when I signed my 2024 contract."

For his last season, he had planned out to see as many different races as possible: "When we had the interviews regarding the 2024 season, the team asked me which races I wanted to do. I said that I would like to go to Australia because I had never been there in my seventeen-year career. The team agreed, and I spent December with a huge enthusiasm."

"Once I got there, it was superb! It was warm, we enjoyed the sun, we ate ice cream while it was winter in Europe," he begins the story from Tour Down Under. "However, after our first ride, I noticed that something was wrong with my back. I had two lumbar hernias during my career, so I knew what to do. I did exercises, stretching, it relieved me, so I went for another ride the next day, but after two and a half hours, I realized that I could no longer pedal. From the second day, all my plans fell apart."

"In June, we met with the team to talk about a potential surgery. If I had been 24-25 years old and had my whole career ahead of me, we could have made the decision to go for it, to forget the 2024 season and think about the following ones. But since it was my last year, we agreed that it wasn’t reasonable to do all that and push the limits just to do a few races in October. So the verdict came in June. I knew that I wasn’t going to race as a pro anymore."

What does the future hold for Konovalovas? "I would like to stay in cycling, I have some ideas. I am still thinking about becoming a riders’ agent. I think this is a sector where I could bring something, especially for riders coming from Lithuania and the Baltic countries in general, so that they have someone to support them and help them become pro and make a living from cycling."