Such is his relationship with the city in the last 25 years that everyone thinks he is a native, even though he comes from Megalopolis.
Vassilis Anastopoulos became a man as an athlete with the Cycling Club of Patras, achieved his first successes and in 2002 made history by becoming the first Greek professional cyclist to sign a contract with the Austrian Volksbank-Ideal.
He has had a great coaching career, working with the world’s top teams and alongside the greatest athletes, such as Mark Cavendish.
Cavendish is one of cycling’s few stars, he has almost 1 million followers on Instagram and in 2023 he released the Netflix documentary on his life entitled ‘Mark Cavendish: Never Enough. Just to get a taste of the size of the athlete that Vassilis Anastopoulos is training even now in Astana.
As an athlete, he has been crowned 12 times Greek Champion in track and road events, 3 times gold Balkan champion, 8th in the World Cycling Championship.
In 2010 he was a National Road Cycling coach while in 2011 he was a coach at the Patrons Sports Club.
He is a graduate of TEFAA Athens with a specialization in roads and holds the UCI Coaching Diploma, the highest cycling coaching diploma he obtained following studying at the World Cycling Federation center having received a scholarship from the International Olympic Committee.
– How does one decide to take up a sport that is not very popular?
“I think it’s a matter of luck and opportunity. I come from Megalopolis, although everyone thinks I’m from Patrino because of my course with POP. There was a cycling club under my house in Megalopolis, which was founded by a man from Athens in 1980. It started as a game back then.”
– Was it possible for you to imagine then what will follow?
“Of course not. We were joking. We played with the bikes, then ran in some races and one thing led to another.”
– When do you come to Patras for the first time?
“I came for the first time with a transfer in 1991 because the Megalopolis club was dissolved and then Mr. Diamantopoulos of POP asked me to come to Patras. Thus began my journey as a Patron now…”.
– Then the discrimination started coming one following the other…
“Yes. First as an athlete and then as a coach.”
– What do you remember from POP years as an athlete?
“The PDO functioned like a family. Things were pure then. When I came to POP, Kanellos Kanellopoulos was the flag. In fact, my first major distinction was in the men’s team that I ran with Kanellos, Lefteris Diamantopoulos and Loukas Katapodis and we managed to win the Panhellenic championship. I, who had a poster of Canello in my room, found myself fighting him at the age of 17. It was a great school to sit next to Kanello”.
– As an athlete or as a person?
“Of course as a human. He is one of the most interesting personalities I have met in my life. It is very lucky to chat with him. I got a lot of stuff and we still talk and have a great relationship. His opinion is of particular importance to me.”
– How did you make a living back then?
“Until then, there was a salary from the National Team and the POP. And the parents because I was a student at the same time at TEFAA”.
– And when does the first professional step come?
“2002 in Austria”.
– It sounded a bit strange then for a Greek cyclist to become a professional…
“But I was the first! We didn’t know what this thing was.”
– And what was this thing anyway?
“Just as the plumber goes every day to fix the taps, the professional athlete has to train and run in the races every day. It was my job. This is how the team managers had presented it to me. I stayed there for 6 years.”
– How much did this experience change you as an athlete and as a person?
“It matured me and changed me a lot. To be alone in a foreign country at that time was not so common, as it is now when it is much easier. The challenge was very big.”
“I learned Wallachian because Austrians have a special accent. That’s what my wife tells me (laughs). I learned from daily contact to the extent that I might get along.”
– How high were your earnings?
“I had a contract with the team. The money back then was enough to live decently.”
– The “Austria” chapter ends and what comes next?
“I returned to Greece a little earlier because due to a global distinction I had, I was appointed to the Ministry of National Defense. I continued as an athlete for two more years, until 2009 in POP and once I stopped I became a federal coach until the 2012 Olympics.
Then I quit the National team, came to POP as a coach for two years, then I was a coach and team manager in a professional team we created in Greece. Then I went to the Netherlands to a U23 team to develop the project.”
– How did this come regarding?
“I had gone on a scholarship to the World Federation’s top coaching school in Switzerland and stayed there for two months. There I happened to meet an athlete manager who obviously appreciated my knowledge and character and let me coach two professional athletes. He saw that they were doing well and when his company decided to build a team, they hired me as a coach.”
– How long did you stay there?
“I stayed four years. We built the team from scratch, we had a lot of accolades and that was basically my advertisement abroad.”
– And in 2019 you were chosen by the top team in the world…
“Yes, Quick Step. Like say Real or Barcelona in football. He was then number 1 in the world. He chose me and even with very good financial rewards. I stayed four years. It’s a very big school, and that’s because you suddenly go to the big salons.”
– What was it that made such a big impression on you?
“The level of organization and the staff of the club which was 60 people! 60 families from the group lived. Imagine that he had a budget of around 25 million euros per year. It had coaches, masseuses, engineers, psychologists, bus drivers, dieticians, secretaries, just like a big club works.”
– Although you had an offer to continue there this year, you chose to leave the team…
“Yes, because I had an offer from Astana, Kazakhstan, to go as head coach. It was the next step. Many people said to me “why leave the top team”, but I saw it as a new challenge”.
– The words “cycling” and “Kazakhstan” sound a little strange to our ears…
“The truth is that the sponsor of the team is from Kazakhstan, but its headquarters is in France. I haven’t even been to Kazakhstan and I don’t think I will! Maybe next year a company from another country will be the sponsor. They are one of the most historic teams in cycling.”
– However, many companies have entered – giants in cycling…
“Of course. We are talking regarding millions. The budget of the teams we compete in the Tour de France ranges from 20 to 50 million euros”.
– So how much money do their top athletes get?
“About 5-6 million euros a year.”
“It was really ‘Messi’, he fell for three years and then when we worked together, he rose once more. This is very well captured in the Netflix documentary regarding his life. We are talking regarding a cycling legend. He holds the record for victories in the Tour de France, an event that is superior to the soccer World Cup. According to a long-term survey, the first in television viewing are the Olympic Games, second is the World Cup and third is the Tour de France. The first two are held every four years, the Tour de France is held every year.”
– What is it like to work with such a great athlete and how did the first contact happen?
“Mark came late to Quick Step where I coached. No one wanted him then. The teams have been planning since October, while he came in December. No coach wanted to take him over and the coaches said “let Vassilis, the Greek, take him”. It was well below him, as he had three years to win a race. Everyone had written him off.
I took the matter a little patriotically and did not believe that such an athlete was finished. As soon as he was told that I would be his coach, we locked ourselves in a room, talked for an hour and immediately it clicked. I made a bet with myself that I can bring him back to a high level.”
– It was a great moment for you too…
“Of course he was… He is one of the few stars of the sport, but here in Greece no one can understand it. When we go abroad, to Italy, France, or even now to Colombia, it’s a mess. It’s incredible what we live in. Everyone wants a photo, autographs. He is one of the stars of sports, not just of cycling.”
– Did your relationship develop into something more than an athlete-coach relationship?
“There is always a coach-athlete relationship and work must be done, but now we have friendly and family relationships. My family has met him, he is coming to Greece”.
– And this year you were once more in Astana…
“One of the reasons I accepted the proposal was Mark’s presence.”
– How can a cycling coach develop?
“Like team sports. Coaching is constantly evolving. You have to be informed every day, to have the possibility if what you are doing is paying off for the athletes. It’s not an easy job. It wants continuous study and analysis of the data.”
Technology has also helped a lot…
“Largely. I am at home and I train my athletes in Italy, in Spain, in the whole of Europe”.
So you don’t have to show up?
“Only when we do cycling camps, like now when we were in Colombia. The rest of the time, I send the training program to such and such an athlete in Spain, he implements it, uploads the data to the platform we have, I analyze it and I have to see what was done right and what wasn’t.”
– Well, Artificial Intelligence has entered cycling as well…
“Not to that great a degree yet, but it’s well on its way, especially with data analysis.”
How was the camp experience in Colombia?
“It’s a different world. It is an amazing country with a lot of poverty, but with good-natured people. Our movement from the hotel to training was always accompanied by the police because there are many kidnappings.”
– How would you feel regarding returning to the PDO and making it a professional team?
“Unfortunately, this cannot happen in Greece. What businessman will put 20 million euros into cycling without any publicity?
– Well, I don’t see returning to Patras anytime soon…
“Never say never! I have many friends and relatives in Patras, so I come several times. And with the president of the Federation and general secretary of POP, Mr. Diamantopoulos, we have a father-son relationship.”
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