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cycling rock star retires

At night and on a speed circuit, the Villicum in San Juan, with the music of a concert thundering around him and on the day of his 33rd birthday, Peter Sagan announces that he is retiring from cycling at the end of the season. He doesn’t want any more stress, but wants to have fun mountain biking and try to compete in the Paris Olympics. The rock star of the peloton, the different rider, leaves him.

“I would like to say that the time has come,” announced the Slovak. I decided that I would like to finish this season as WorldTour riders. I would like to prepare for the Olympic Games on a mountain bike.”

A professional since 2011, Sagan has earned 121 wins, the best races are in his record, the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and three consecutive world championships from 2015 to 2017, breaking the curse of the rainbow jersey. And the record of seven regular green jerseys in the Tour de France.

After the champions who win the Tour, the Giro or the Vuelta, perhaps above most of them, is Peter Sagan. A revolutionary cyclist who behaved as if unconcerned by the demands of his profession. Free and carefree in his way of expressing himself, he was a star in his heyday, an incomparable talent.

Sagan has tried for years to enjoy cycling, the competition, the landscapes, the feeling of freedom in a sport that is often stressful and always demanding with the results account and the sponsors who want victories.

“If I continue cycling beyond 35 years, shoot me,” he confessed to his close people more than once. At 33 she leaves.

Author of unforgettable scenes in cycling, his victory at the Roubaix velodrome, his three World Cups (attack on the Richmond cobblestones, sprint in Qatar, another reduced finish in Bergen), his twelve stages in the Tour and four in the Vuelta, Sagan has marked an era in cycling.

Your son

“It’s important to me to spend time with my son Marlon and see life from different angles, and not just as a cyclist. It was never my dream to race or be a professional driver until I was 40 or 50. I think Now is the time. And if I am going to be able to finish my career in Paris at the Olympic Games, that will be a good thing for me,” he said at his birthday party on the night of San Juan.

Sagan indicated that he could continue to ride mountain biking with the sponsorship of TotalEnergies in 2024 and that he could participate in the occasional minor WorldTour race.

«There is no more pressure on whether I win or lose. It’s something I always wanted, to finish my mountain bike career. I wanted to do it for myself and no one else.”

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