Petr Vakoč turns to Mountain Biking after retiring from road racing

The Czech rider has had a mixed career in the road, coming up through the ranks and turning professional with Quick-Step where he's gotten wins in the Brabantse Pijl, Tour de Pologne and his home Czech Cycling Tour to name a few.

"Super excited to start living another dream of mine and continue my life as pro rider, although in a different discipline," Vakoč said upon his announcement earlier today.

However Vakoč's career took a turn in 2018 when on a training camp with teammates Bob Jungels and Laurens de Plus in South Africa, he was hit by a truck and fractured several vertebrae. Miraculously, he recovered from the injury to spend another two seasons, before he signed with Alpecin - Fenix where he retired after another couple of seasons.

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"I will be racing the biggest MTB marathon races alongside current World Champion Andreas Seewald and teaming up for Cape Epic with former winner Kristian Hynek."  

At only 29 years of age he announced he was retiring from cycling, but on his Facebook post he also left the following statement: "I feel deep satisfaction and desire to focus on different areas of life and new challenges." If it was a planned move or not it's not clear, but the Czech rider is still very much within the age of high performance, after he fulfilled what he called the biggest of achievement of his career by returning to the Tour de France last year.

Vakoč completes by adding, "It has been steep learning curve rediscovering the wide tires and technical trails but I am super excited about this upcoming season packed with the biggest marathon races including the UCI World series and championships. My new adventure kicks off this Thursday already at Mediterranean Epic"