Sagan confirms epic ‘pink and green’ Tour-Giro quest
Cycling superstar Peter Sagan will race the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, but will skip the majority of the oneday classics this season, he told a media conference.
The Bora-hansgrohe leader said an eighth green jersey awarded for the best sprinter at the Tour was the key target this season, while respecting a promise to race the Giro just 13 days later was important to him as a man.
“Yes, it’s green and pink,” Sagan confirmed when asked if his main season came down to the bold double bid of the Tour and the Giro, where the leader wears the revered pink jersey.
The programme means Sagan, known for exceptional endurance, will race a staggering 42 Grand Tour stages in just 58 days after the original cycling calendar was crammed into a few months after the coronavirus lockdown.
“I promised them [the Giro] before the date changed, and I really want to respect that promise,” the 30-year-old Slovak said.
The Tour, where Sagan will target a record eighth sprint points title, runs from August 29 to September 20, and he will then embark on his first Giro on October 3.
Sagan’s German team have emerged as a major player in cycling just behind Britain’s Ineos and the Dutch JumboVisma outfit.
At the Tour, Bora will be led by German climber Emanuel Buchmann after his fourth place overall result in the 2019 edition, and will also field this year’s Paris-Nice winner Maximilian Schachmann.
“It’s the Tour then the Giro, if the world championships are in Switzerland in between that will be too hard for me and I’ll skip it.”
The former three-time world champion said he may change his mind on the world championships if the location of the race is moved away from the mountains, which is a possibility.
“You cannot have everything in this world, sometimes you have to make hard decisions,” Sagan said.
He confirmed his first competitive race would be the Strade Bianche classic in Italy on August 1, and hinted his main one-day racing target would be to win the Milan-San Remo on August 8.
“The Strade, I’m going as part of my preparation. If I can try something I will.
“I’ll be really ready for Milan.”
Bora team manager Ralph Denk said earlier in the day: “We want to win a monument.”
There are five monuments, the very strenuous one-day races, and Sagan has twice come second at the longest of them, Milan San Remo.
Speaking via a Zoom conference call with lush mountains from Bora’s Austrian training camp in the background, Sagan was relaxed and slim.
Sagan will skip the Belgian classics that will be held during the Giro, and also the French mud-fest Paris-Roubaix, which Sagan won in 2018 and which takes place on the last day of the Giro. —