273 days without a win, but ‘rock star’ Sagan is enjoying a farewell tour

Completely against his character, Peter Sagan drives around inconspicuously. In the last spring of his extremely successful career, the ‘rock star of cycling’ is mainly filling the peloton.

For the last time, Sagan will start this morning in Gent-Wevelgem, the spring race that he won three times. But at 33 he is no longer even counted among the favorites.

But not a trace of frustration about that from Sagan himself. He especially wants to enjoy his farewell tour.

“We deliberately announced in January that this will be Peter’s last season on the road,” says Gabriele Uboldi. The Italian has been the permanent companion of the three-time world champion (2016, 2017 and 2018) for almost ten years. “Everywhere Peter drives, it’s the last time and he makes it a big party.”

He was 117th in Omloop het Nieuwsblad, 33rd in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, 104th in Strade Bianche, 44th in Milan-Sanremo and stepped down in the E3 Classic. His farewell tour is therefore quite anonymous.

“Look, Peter never really cared about results,” says Uboldi. “He just wanted to play the leading role in the race and whether he finished first, second or fifth, it didn’t matter to him.”

The Italian reinforces this claim with an anecdote from 2019. “Every year after Milan-Sanremo we went to the same restaurant to celebrate the race. His regular teammates were always there, as were some of the staff.”

“That year Julian Alaphilippe won and Peter also invited him,” says Uboldi. “It turned out to be the biggest and wildest party of Peter’s career, while he himself had finished fourth that day. That says everything about him.”

Another reason to announce the farewell so early is the many fans that Sagan has. “He wants to give them the opportunity to come and have a look one more time. Because Peter is perhaps just as popular as all the other riders combined,” says Uboldi.

The Belgian Jolien Vermeulen is the founder of the Peter Sagan Fan Club, which has over 32,000 members. The members share pictures of their idol and meet together at competitions. “Peter is very accessible and always makes time for the fans,” she says. “He really appreciates his fans and is always in good spirits.”

And now that the results are not forthcoming – Sagan has been without a win for almost 300 days – the Slovak entertains the public in other ways. A wheelie at the start of the Omloop, for example. And last week at the Milan-Sanremo team presentation, he was the last to go on stage and he took the time to thank the audience.

“He is very cheerful,” says Miroslav Kovácik, a Slovak sports journalist from Sportnet.sk. “He really enjoys his last year. You always see him laughing and joking. Of course he has nothing left to prove. Maybe his motivation seems a bit lower at first glance, but I’m sure he still wants to win.”

However, the lack of performance does not eat away at Sagan, says Steven de Jongh, who was his sports director at Tinkoff in 2015 and 2016. They were Sagan’s glory days, with world championships, green jerseys and victories in Tour stages and the great classics.

“But even then Sagan could very easily accept a bad day. There are more important things in the world than a cycling race, he would say. One day you’re good, the next you’re not. That’s life.”

They were also the years that Sagan was the big favorite everywhere he started. “And he could handle that role very easily,” says De Jongh. “Precisely because he didn’t take cycling too seriously.” The text is not for nothing Why so serious? tattooed on the rider’s belly.

Uboldi has the same tattoo, on his leg. The result of a losing bet. “Peter always makes crazy bets with the regular group of riders around him. Daniel Oss, Maciej Bodnar, his brother Juraj, Fernando Gaviria, Elia Viviani and Oscar Gatto and some of the staff. We’re just a bunch of crazy people doing crazy things together .”

He is a rider with a huge honors list. Seven green jerseys and twelve stage victories in the Tour, three world titles, Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders. But at the same time, Sagan acted like a rock star all around.

When asked, De Jongh does not want to tell anecdotes from their time together. “Because what happens at training camp stays at training camp.”

“But Peter likes him”, laughs the sports director. “He loves life and a beer, that’s no secret. In Monaco he regularly went out with Gaviria and that period didn’t do Gaviria’s career, let’s say.”

Sagan is ‘only’ 33 and should actually be able to last for years. Yet he has been completely overtaken by the new generation, with Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Remco Evenepoel, Tadej Pogacar and Tom Pidcock.

That is partly due to the traces left by the turbulent life as a rock star. But there are more causes. Where the current generation of riders accurately completes the training sessions according to a schedule, Sagan is more of a whiner.

“When he was in the United States or Andorra to prepare for the season, he was mountain biking with Daniel Oss every day,” says De Jongh. “Then you are lagging behind riders who are preparing more seriously for the season.”

But the main cause of Sagan’s downfall? “Long covid”, say De Jongh, Kovácik and Vermeulen, independently of each other.

Sagan was infected with the corona virus no less than three times and the consequences were felt for months. He never returned to his true level after that.

“We’re not even sure if it’s lung covid,” says Uboldi. “Peter was hospitalized several times last year for tests, but a cause was never found. His legs tired much faster and he could no longer cope with the efforts.”

In Slovakia it is unabatedly popular. Sagan is regarded as one of the best athletes ever in the country. “I would have loved to see the 2017 Sagan compete against the current generation with Van der Poel and Van Aert,” says journalist Kovácik. “Cycling has gotten faster now, but I think the Sagan back then would still make it very difficult for them.”

But it looks like Sagan will spend his final months anonymously in the peloton, then party hard in every finish place. “Of course he still wants to be successful,” says Kovácik. “A stage win in the Tour de France would be a wonderful farewell.”

At the end of this year, Sagan will store his bicycle permanently. But the clubs in Monte Carlo will have to wait a little longer before they can greet the beloved rock star every week. After all, Sagan still wants to participate in the Olympic Games as a mountain biker in 2024…