Thanks for doing this, In one of the future blogs I was wondering if we could have a training type of blog, who you ride with, why Gent rather than say Spain etc, who sets your training programs what type of stuff you do etc
Good luck in Croatia
Yes, Gent is an interesting choice to me too. If you're racing a lot in France, Belgium and the Netherlands it makes a lot of sense but I haven't seen much of SB over here lately.
However, the Gent area isn't too far from a decent international airport (at least when it isn't affected by strikes and the lunatic fringes); it's also home to several
services courses, a significant community of Belgian and expat pro cyclists and a world-class velodrome.
So I think Kirill's choice is simply because he used to ride for RusVelo and they're based in Flanders. As recently as last season, he was riding quite a lot of races here.
I used to enjoy climbing the woody hill on which Ivanov's big white house perches above the town of Diest. The RusVelo team car was often parked outside.