Fabian Cancellara is one of the strongest men in the peloton. When he sets his eyes on something, it will take an awful lot to prevent the Swiss getting what he wants. This year he has set his sights on an historic Flanders-Roubaix double, making him the first man to win the double three times. This target just about sums up the Swiss’ pursuit of perfection.

“Yes. Yes. Every race. I prefer to win less, but what I win, I win in a strong way. It keeps for me, and it stands out to myself. That’s why, when people ask me, ‘when was your best moment? What was your biggest victory?’ It starts from ’06 and ends last year,” Cancellara said this spring in an extended interview with VeloNews and Het Nieuwsblad. “I mean, find me a victory please that I could say, ‘Hmm, that just came.”

Whenever he wins, he wins big. He has soloed to his two Flanders titles, his three Roubaix wins and his one Milan-Sanremo. Let Cancellara have a bike length on a cobbled road and you might as well climb off the bike because he will never be seen again.

“I see it in everything. I prefer to have less holidays but quality holidays. Of course it will be nice to have 500 victories in your pockets, but I will never reach Cannibal [Eddy Merckx] … no one will … even we put all our victories together … not even with 10 riders you reach that,” he said. Cancellara doesn’t know how many races he’s won. He stopped counting.

“I have no idea. It’s not what I need to know. I know [I win less] per year. I’m not a super sprinter. I’m not a super climber. That’s why for me sometimes it’s harder to win races,” he said. “I think quality comes first. I don’t want to have something crap. Something bad. I stand out for the best in what I’m doing.”

But off the bike, Cancellara is seen as just a normal guy who looks after his family.

“He’s a normal guy for me, to me. Also how he goes on with the whole team. You see, you feel, especially as he comes to his goals, his targets, his races, the classics, the sharper he is,” his director, Dirk Demol, told VeloNews. “And also because he gives himself 100 percent and also he wants the people around him to come at 100 percent. You have to be sharp. And he feels it. And you feel like he’s loading up. You see him growing on the bike and everything, but he’s mentally preparing. He’s good at that. Physically he’s an incredibly good athlete. But mentally, he’s strong in the head, eh? He’s really strong.”

Cancellara admits that he has had to sacrifice a lot to achieve his goals but now he is finding the right balance between racing and his family.

“You have to find a middle way of everything,” he said. “I mean, I’m strict on things, but certain things no, you need to find a middle way. I’m a dad, I’m not someone who goes 24 hours like this [taps table], the clock goes, you’re there, you do this. I mean, no. I like to be — I don’t say top or flop — but it’s like training sometimes. Doing things 100 percent, really focused.”

Sometimes, he declines autographs. When told that, to a lot of people, he’s a hero, he’s Spartacus, he inches back. “Yeah, I know. I know. That’s the thing. You have to understand that … I’m a normal person like everyone else … once in a while I say, ‘do you like talking about your job all the time?’ … Sometimes that’s the funny thing. You make them understand that we are normal people. In the press we are heroes, whatever we are. We are 365-day athletes. That’s the sort of things you get along through the years. These kinds of things are there, and you have to try and to go on and live with that.”

But on Sunday, Spartacus will unleash himself in the first battle of the Cobbled Wars. And he will only accept the top step of the podium.

“You’re in the war, you’re in the fight. You want to show your strength,” Cancellara said of the waning hours of a classic. “You want to show you’re the strongest. And then when you win and you have this feeling, this new experience … tactics and feelings and mentality and power and luck and so many things, and it’s just something beautiful.”