The thing to remember is that every sprint is different: One hundred riders with one hundred different stories is one thing, but the variables in the sprint are huge. Most big bunch sprints come in Grand Tours, so by their very nature, they vary, as they have a different route every year, every day. Even if a stage finishes in a town the race has visited before, there is no guarantee the line will be in the same place, or the route will cover the same corners or rises and falls.
Crashes, or just fear of crashes, play a huge part in sprinting, of course, and you have to live by your wits a little bit. Being nervous about crashing often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, so it is key to stay relaxed. It stresses me out, which is the last thing I need. Everybody is relying on you, and you have to fight for your position on the wheel in front miles before the finish.
Life is too short. If you want to win a Monument like Flanders or Roubaix, for example, the last kilometers will be like the last 10 kilometers of a Grand Tour stage for me: Ride carefully, ride positively, keep your eyes open. With a lead-out train, you take much of your own fate out of your own hands.
You lose the wheel. Another team has a faster train, and your guys get burned off early. Your last guy misjudges the distance. The likely result is yes, in theory, you may have a better chance of winning, but you also have a greater chance of going nowhere.
I prefer to do my own thing, and if somebody is faster than me, then he is faster than me. No problem. One man—one good man—can get on the front and drive a group along to dissuade attacks, can drag an escapee back or give up a wheel or even his bike if I am struck by some act of God at the sharp end of a race.
What do you do? You sell him something else. Sell my rivals something else. His mother Helena should have seen it coming when he dropped out of school as a teenager to pursue pro cycling in Italy. He was studying to be an administrative assistant — how exciting would that office have been with Sagan doing wheelies over to the copy machine every day? Corporate Slovakia must still rue the missed opportunity. For instance, coach Peter Zanicky likes to huddle with his friends at the pub and, after a few pints, they come up with novel victory salutes, which Sagan adopts at the races.
Recently, Zanicky challenged his former pupil to a game of arm-wrestling in a Zilina bar. And he won the race. Attention Hollywood producers: We have found the pivotal scene in the inevitable Peter Sagan biopic. When I met him at his home in Monaco, he asked me half-heartedly, as if he didn't dare, if he could participate in gravel events.
It's a new market that is linked to ecology, urban mobility, the pleasure that he and I are looking for.
This will open new doors. But Sagan wants to focus on recovering from the injury that he got in his crash with Caleb Ewan Lotto-Soudal on stage three of the Tour de France. Sagan carried on until stage 12 where he had to pull out with Bursitis after a cut into the knee caused by a chainring became infected. After that, he seeks to ride the World Championships in Leuven for Slovakia and to try and take a fourth world titlem, before heading the rescheduled Paris-Roubaix on October 3 with Bora-Hansgrohe, likely his last race with the German-registered team.
Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. I started watching cycling back in , before all the hype around London and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after.
This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism.
Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather. After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories. When not writing stories for the site, I don't really switch off my cycling side as I watch every race that is televised as well as being a rider myself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
Maybe too regular.
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