Immanuil Antonov is one of the most, if not the most, decorated riders in the history of Navarone CT. He was handed a contract as a raw talent coming from the most prestigious of, and back then the only one, Uzbekistan's cycling academies, Tashkent Browncoats, and even at that point he was singled out by legendary coach Adilson Silva from Team AEK as a rider with potential similar to the legend Minas Dadakos, which I frankly wasn't sure about. "Those were other times" was my thought.
To Navarone CT's benefit, Adilson was absolutely right; his talent flourished and reached levels close to its ceiling as a rider, he gave glimpses of his readiness with a top9 in 1st Div while mid training, but, ultimately, two back to back injuries held him back for his first Navarone season.
Given Adilson's insistence in his resemblance with Dadakos, and having shown fine glimpses of an already pre...
Read moreImmanuil Antonov is one of the most, if not the most, decorated riders in the history of Navarone CT. He was handed a contract as a raw talent coming from the most prestigious of, and back then the only one, Uzbekistan's cycling academies, Tashkent Browncoats, and even at that point he was singled out by legendary coach Adilson Silva from Team AEK as a rider with potential similar to the legend Minas Dadakos, which I frankly wasn't sure about. "Those were other times" was my thought.
To Navarone CT's benefit, Adilson was absolutely right; his talent flourished and reached levels close to its ceiling as a rider, he gave glimpses of his readiness with a top9 in 1st Div while mid training, but, ultimately, two back to back injuries held him back for his first Navarone season.
Given Adilson's insistence in his resemblance with Dadakos, and having shown fine glimpses of an already prepared rider in legendary grounds like Bastogne - Hasselt, we prepared his peak form to hit in 1st Div's longest tour, Germany, in which he proceeded to surprise everyone, including myself, with a victory in the sprint classification, netting him his first green jersey.
Given his success in his first try, we chose not to fix what was not broken, feeding him a steady diet of FR specialist races + peak form in Helsinki and Germany Tour for the next few seasons, achieving 2 Germany SC jerseys and 2 Helsinki trophies in that phase. Particularly remarkable was season 58, where he mostly top3'd anything he raced, and achieved the Helsinki - GT SC double.
His second act with the team was one of reinvention. Injuries and other issues forced management to change his program, racing GT + Nederlandse, unfortunately being unremarkable in both. Next season age took his toll and he didn't perform as he expected from himself, while still maintaining respectable numbers. But finally in season 61 had his swan song, or what we thought it was, winning GT SC a third time, this as an underdog, for a total of 5 career palmares items.
Next season he tried Vuelta, with mediocre success, and S63 he wound up not participating in any tour, seemingly having fallen into the team's background, though still having good results like his first victory in Route du Cidre. S64 confirmed the narrative, with him failing to get a single result ...
... or so we thought. S65 saw him racing less and sniping more, with 4 prestigious 1st Division victories, some of which like Los Angeles and Quebec having eluded him for the entirety of his career, until that point. That was his actual swan song, and after a couple more seasons racing very strategically for fewer and fewer targets, he finally retired at the end of season 67, having turned 39.
As a pure flat rider his stats will end up being obliterated by Tomoaki, Nassiri and whoever comes later, as long as we can maintain the FR team strength. But as an overall rider, I doubt we will find someone anytime soon who can perform at the level Antonov has shown us during all these years.
Some stats to put his career in perspective:
* 21 victories.
* 69 results (his entry way to the Kenny Hakoon list)
* 2 trophies (Helsinki) and 3 jerseys (GT SC), all 1st Division.
* Earned 1.2 million in prize money, for a net benefit of over 1 million.
* Won the individual FR calendar.
* 2nd in the individual points rankings (S58)
* Won Best FR Award (x2)
* Won Best Sprinter Award (S58)
* More than 10.000 career points.
Legend.
Uzbekistan