Peter Sagan, the career of a great rider

At the age of 33, Peter Sagan will finish his career as a professional road racer at the end of this season after 14 years at the top. A cyclist who has made us associate his image with that of the rainbow jersey, when he was not wearing the green of the Tour de France points classification, which he made his own domain. We review the successes of one of the most spectacular cyclists of recent times.

More than 120 victories on Peter Sagan's impressive career record

Long gone is the year 2010 when a young Slovakian rider started his professional career with the Liquigas team, where he soon made his debut by winning two stages of the Paris-Nice race against the best riders in the world.

These were just the first signs of what was to come, in a first season at the highest level of cycling, Peter Sagan would add 5 victories. We would have to wait for the following year to see his definitive emergence in which he would become one of the most successful cyclists of the season, accumulating no less than 15 victories as well as being one of the kings of La Vuelta a España in which he would manage to score three partial victories.

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Already a cycling star, 2012 would see his debut in the Tour de France and the beginning of Peter Sagan's relationship with the green jersey of the points classification, a jersey that he would win 7 times between this year and 2019, only missing the one in 2017. He would thus surpass the record held by the German Erik Zabel with some victories that he would be able to put in value by achieving it, not only based on the 3 stage victories he would achieve in his debut, but also by filtering in breakaways, demonstrating that in Peter Sagan there was much more than a sprinter.

That same year he proved his skills as a Classics rider with a good spring campaign in which he occupied places of honour in races such as Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders and Amstel Gold Race. Triumphs that would come in 2013 when Peter Sagan finally managed to raise his arms on the cobblestones by adding to his already remarkable list of victories in Ghent-Wevelgem and Flèche Brabanzona.

A constant flow of victories for a tremendously prolific Peter Sagan with whom we reach the year 2015. A season of changes in which he left Cannondale, or in other words, the Liquigas structure in which he had remained since his professional debut, to become part of Tinkoff-Saxo, a change that would also make him one of the images, a role that he maintains today, of the Specialized bike brand.

A more discreet start to the season than usual took him all the way to the Tour de France, in which he would add his fourth green jersey but without scoring any stage victories. The best was to come at the end of the year, when he made a powerful move on the not very selective world circuit of Ritchmond with barely half a lap to go, on the hard cobbled climb that preceded the fast final stretch. An attack to which no one was able to respond and which would allow him to brilliantly conquer his first rainbow jersey.

With his World Champion title, Peter Sagan finally managed to open his account in monuments in 2016. Uncontested, he managed to ride solo on the inhuman cobbled slopes of the Paterberg to win the Tour of Flanders. He also repeated an excellent performance in the Tour de France with no less than 3 more stage victories and a new green jersey.

Shortly afterwards, a change of scenery was announced with a move to the Bora-Hansgrohe team, with whom he would race for the next five seasons.

However, this year's curiosity was his withdrawal from the road race at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro to take part in mountain biking, his secret passion, to which he will devote himself exclusively next season to put a definitive end to his career at the Paris Olympics. 

His Olympic adventure in mountain biking did not end well. After starting behind due to his ranking in the speciality, he tried to make a meteoric comeback and although he managed to get close to the leading positions, the risk he took led him to suffer two flat tyres that ended his participation in the event.

Better luck would come at the infamous Road World Championships in Doha. A totally bland course to which only the wind managed to give a minimum of light to the race. Sagan showed his strength to sneak into the select group that would compete in the race and over which he won the sprint in a clear way.

A prolific season that saw him win the Vélo d'Or, awarded annually by the French magazine Vélo Magazine, at the end of 2016.

A somewhat grey season in 2017 where he failed to get the results he was looking for in the classics and his streak of green jerseys in the Tour de France was broken after he was thrown out of the race after sticking out his elbow to avoid being overtaken by Mark Cavendish in the sprint on stage four, which ended with the British rider's bones on the ground.

However, the World Championships in Bergen helped him to forget all the disappointments of the season, once again making his top speed count in the sprint that would decide the World Championship. A third rainbow jersey that placed him in the Olympus of cycling. A figure that only 5 cyclists: Eddy Merckx, Alfredo Binda, Rik Van Steenbergen, Óscar Freire and Sagan himself have managed to accumulate, the only one to do it consecutively.

Despite a huge win at Paris-Roubaix and another green jersey at the Tour de France in 2018, his win production began to wane, a fact blamed by many on personal problems that led to a divorce from his wife. After a new green jersey in 2019, the pandemic years have left Sagan on the sidelines, never quite finding that spark that made him one of the greatest cyclists in history. Nevertheless, in 2021 he would still win the maglia ciclamino, which certifies victory in the points classification of the Giro d'Italia.

In this 2023, which will be the last year of professional road cycling for Peter Sagan, joining the French team Total-Energies with whom he signed last season. In any case, he has already announced that he will continue to race in Mountain Bike until the Olympic Games in Paris next year. Peter Sagan seems to have started with a good dynamic, entering in the dispute for the victory in the 4 stages of La Vuelta a San Juan, where, taking advantage of the rest day, coinciding with his birthday, he gave the news of his retirement.

In his last year on the road, Peter Sagan will set his sights on the World Championships to be held this summer in Scotland, which offers a course that could be suitable for his characteristics. He has the chance to break the barrier of three rainbow jerseys that no cyclist has ever managed to conquer. Would he retire at the end of the season if he succeeds? We will have to wait until August to clear our doubts.