Slovakia has one rider on the start line of the elite men's road race at the World Championships in Montreal on Sunday. He is the team's masseur.
Vladimír Kováčik is 28, works professionally as a masseur, and has not pinned a number on for a UCI race in almost a decade. He is not expected to feature much beyond the flag drop.
Slovakia was allocated four places in the race. None of the riders who would have filled them could be there.
Lukáš Kubiš is staying with his trade team, Unibet Rose Rockets, rather than ride a Montreal course that does not suit him. Mattias Schwarzbacher of EF Education-EasyPost is still recovering from surgery. Martin Svrček of Soudal-Quick Step, a two-time under-23 world road race medallist, was also unavailable, for health reasons.
Registration for the championships had already closed, so no replacement rider could be called up.
Starting nobody was not an option either. Failure to participate would have put Slovakia at risk of relegation to the UCI's B category, which would make qualification for future events, the 2028 Olympic Games among them, significantly tougher.
Relegation would apply to the whole nation rather than the elite men alone. That includes the recently crowned under-23 world champion Viktória Chladoňová, a versatile rider who competes in cyclocross and on the road with Visma-Lease a Bike.
The national coach was direct about what the entry is for. "Our participation is only a formality," Jakub Vanco told Sportnet. "We will be represented by a person who will be present and formally comply with the conditions and permits. We do this for our talented cyclists like [Mattias] Schwarzbacher, [Lukáš] Kubis and [Viktoria] Chladonova so that they can make it to the Olympic Games."
It was not so long ago that Slovakia arrived at these races with rather different expectations. Peter Sagan won the first of three consecutive world titles in Richmond eleven years ago.
The coach's phrasing deserves to be taken at face value, because the regulation takes it that way too. What is required is a person who will be present and formally comply with the conditions. Slovakia has supplied one. The requirement has been met in full.
This newspaper notes that nothing in the requirement mentions speed. A nation's standing is protected by the act of starting, and starting is something a person does at a fixed moment in one place. It is the only part of a bicycle race that does not involve cycling.
Our analysts have looked for the performance threshold and cannot find one. There is a category for nations that do not start. There is no category for nations that start slowly.
The escalation is a matter of rounding. A rider who finishes last preserves the nation's status exactly as well as a rider who wins, and at considerably lower cost. On a strict reading of the incentives, Slovakia has fielded the most efficient team in Montreal.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has identified the one genuine operational risk. The masseur is the only member of the delegation qualified to treat the legs of the rider, and on Sunday the rider is the masseur.
The rest is settled. Chladoňová's route to the Olympic Games runs through a start line in Canada that somebody had to stand on.
Somebody did.