Mareczko on the hunt for records

With six stages remaining in the 12^th Tour of Hainan, Jakub Mareczko is likely to top the world’s tally of victories among the professional cyclists this year. With a second stage win in Chengmai, he totals 11 successes in 2017, although some experts wouldn’t count the one he got at the lower ranked Tour de Bretagne in France because that was a 2.2 race for which WorldTour riders aren’t eligible. For now, Marcel Kittel and Fernando Gaviria, both from Quick-Step Floors, lead the accounts with 14 victories each, the German having claimed five of them at the Tour de France and the Colombian four of them at the Giro d’Italia. On two occasions, Mareczko came second to the latter in the Italian Grand Tour.

Sprinters are usually on top of that list at the end of each cycling season. Chris Froome who has just been awarded the Vélo d’Or in Paris after being voted best rider of the year by specialized journalists from all over the world, only has four victories: the overall classifications of the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España plus two stages. It puts him 57^th on victory ranking…

Once a true goal for many sprinters, riders nowadays seldom express their desire to be the most successful cyclist of the year. Mareczko, still a very young sprinter at the age of 23, is also very cautious. “Firstly, I want to win a stage”, he announced before the Tour of Hainan. After he won two of them, he said: “I take it day by day. As a team, we want to control the race to get as many bunch sprint finishes as possible.”

Mareczko already became the most successful Italian rider of 2017. He’s one victory down on world champion Peter Sagan. For now, he’s got just as many as Alejandro Valverde who performed extremely well in the first three months of the season before he crashed out of the Tour de France during the inaugural time trial. In three years as a pro, Mareczko already has 36 international victories under his belt. It’s exactly the same score as Sagan at the same age at the end of his third pro season. Both Valverde and Sagan passed the number of 100 pro victories this year, the Spaniard at the age of 37, the Slovakian at 27.

Mareczko is on the right ramp for making history as a true winner in modern cycling. Winning is a confidence booster for winning more. But as he didn’t win stage 1 on Saturday in Wanning, there’s a record he won’t beat: in 2013, the Belkin team swept all nine stages and the overall classification in the Tour of Hainan with only two different winners, Moreno Hofland and Theo Bos.