Peter Sagan was the champion of the show in times of very boring cycling
No matter how many times I stop remembering it, and hours after his retirement I felt like remembering five moments that make Sagan the father of the show, the man who created the show from scratch in the middle of cycling that I don’t remember as the most beautiful.
Accustomed to the current generation, not so long ago seeing a drinking Tour was in the hands of the “secondaries”, cyclists who did wonders for you at any stageleaving behind sequences that age very well.
Images like that incipient Sagan in the very boring Wiggins Tour, imitating Forrest Gump to the annoyance of Cancellara or putting shine in Froome’s editions, beyond the overwhelming control of Team Sky.
In those days, I think Peter Sagan distinguished himself as the most brilliant, inspiring and influential cyclist of his time, beyond a four-time Tour winner and other shining stars.
Peter Sagan’s top 5 moments
The final cut in Montpellier
Of the four Tours that Froome won, I think 2016 was by far the most tedious, a race in which he showed no cracks, not even in the filling stages.
At a roundabout, on the way to Monpellier, Froome and Sagan meet in a minimal cut accompanied by Maciej Bodnar, a great friend of Sagan, and Geraint Thomas.
It is a day of transition towards Ventoux, but the four of them open up and reach the finish line with victory for the Slovakian, capable of bursting and going to the end in his bet against the peloton.
The arrival of Córdoba in the Vuelta
The descent towards Córdoba in the 2011 Vuelta is so difficult that four Liquigas remain ahead, with Agnoli, Cappecchi and Nibali, along with Sagan and Pablo Lastras.
Four from the same team against Lastras.
In the relays the greens enter with everything to the point that the Movistar team puts them in check at the finish.
Nibali, slow like few others in a group sprint, does not reach the level of the Madrid native, he looks at Sagan and he finishes the stage like the greats.
The Slovak was not the monster he was going to become, but he was already marking territory.
Victory in Flanders
Although he was there knocking on the door of many monuments, Sagan was able to win “only” two.
The first of them was a Flanders run at a mile an hour in which he was the smartest for sneaking into the good cut with Kwiatkowski and taking Vanmarcke’s colors in the Paterberg with an in-extremis start as Cancellara warned from behind.
Sagan’s solo ride to the Oudenaarde finish line rounded off a day in which his rainbow shone like never before.
Shots on the post in San Remo
Sagan didn’t always have to win to end up leaving us breathless.
That electric and tight finale of San Remo 2017 with his archrival Kwiatkowski left us on the couch with a final sprint that, as you can see in the image, could not have been more brutal.
Sagan was never able to win San Remo, but he was the key wheel in the final stretch of Poggio until the new generation burst in, marking the path to victory for quite a few.
In the Tyrrhenian, under the flood
Among the many stages that Sagan won on Tirreno-type laps, from Switzerland to California, I remember that famous stage in which Vincenzo Nibali took the blue jersey from Chris Froome in the deluge.
At an impossible level, Nibali started and went alone with Sagan and Purito at the wheelbetween curtains of water and a budding darkness.
The three made their way until Sagan accounted for both on the Port Sant’Elpidio straight…
That was more than ten years ago, days in which Sagan built himself the crown of the most inclusive and transcendent cyclist of his time, a rockstar who made us enjoy like few others in years in which cycling fell into the trap of control and predictability. .
2024-02-10 05:59:39
#Sagan #road #bigger
