"To be able to win, you don't have to be afraid to lose" - Stefan Küng looking to get rid of his 'nearly-man' tag in 2025's Classics

Stefan Küng has long been there or thereabouts in the Monuments, with five top-10s to his name across the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix since 2022. Although a first victory in the biggest one-day races of the calendar has so far proven illusive, the 31-year-old Swiss is looking to get rid of his 'nearly-man' tag in 2025.

“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,” states the Groupama - FDJ powerhouse in an in-depth interview with Write Bike Repeat, noting how the attitude within the sport has changed in recent years when it comes to winning, thanks in part to the introduction of World Tour relegation and promotion.

"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," he recalls. "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," Kung continues. "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.”

The fact remains though, that Kung is still searching for a win and it's a search he is desperate to end. "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,'” he concludes.