COUN T E R POINT
THE REIGN OF PETER THE GREAT
Peter Sagan has been the blockbuster rider of the last decade but can he be truly said to have defined an era? Procycling looks at the evidence
Peter Sagan is an anomaly. Not just because he’s a generational talent, but because he doesn’t seem to comfortably fit into an era as we normally see them. For all his talent and wins, has the Slovakian done enough to define a period? In 10, 20 years’ time, will the 2010s be looked at as the Peter Sagan era? As we pass into what will surely be the Van Aert-Van der Poel era, is it time to ask whether Sagan missed out on the opportunity to make an even bigger impact?
Maybe, instead of the 2010s having been the Sagan era, they could be looked upon as being an interregnum between the Boonen-Cancellara years and the Van der Poel-Van Aert period.
In a professional career which has already lasted more than a decade, the BoraHansgrohe rider has won three world titles, seven points jerseys at the Tour de France, plus Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. This is clearly impressive, but perhaps he hasn’t been in command of the sport in the same way that those before him have been, despite being one of the few riders to transcend cycling and break into public consciousness.
You could argue that there’s been no single standout classics rider for a while. Boonen and Cancellara won multiple monuments; Sagan has taken two. He is the undisputed classics rider of this generation yet without the palmarès to match that reputation.
Perhaps his biggest problem has been that he is often marked out of races, simply for being Peter Sagan. This is most obviously seen in his results at Milan-San Remo, a race that seems perfectly suited to him. He has been in the top 10 of La Primavera eight times and has finished second twice, stymied by a series of opponents - Gerald Ciolek, Michał Kwiatkowski, Arnaud Démare - none of whom are on his level, but have managed to outwit him. It might be that it takes Sagan being written out of contention for him to deliver on the Via Roma.
Boonen and Cancellara duelled on the cobbles of Roubaix and Flanders across multiple seasons, although they often missed each other in the biggest races.
Sagan has not faced a direct rival of the same calibre who he can battle directly. Instead, he’s been up against a series of good riders, who will not be remembered in the same way. Since 2015, Alexander Kristoff, Niki Terpstra and Alberto Bettiol have all won the Tour of Flanders, and John Degenkolb, Mathew Hayman and Greg Van Avermaet have won ParisRoubaix. None of them are particularly comparable to Sagan in terms of output, and yet they have all won these races just as many times as the great Slovakian, meaning it is easy to lose his quality in the general mix of classics racing in the 2010s.
Perhaps it has been the era of Quick Step, rather than Sagan. The Slovak has battled against the collective might of the Belgian team, who have variously had Terpstra, Zdeněek Štybar and Philippe Gilbert as cards to play in classics. The Belgian team has dominated the spring classics over the past few years, and their unified power has made it difficult for a rider like Sagan, who has been the focal point of his squad. The options Quick
Step have been able to put on the startline make them difficult to race against, with attacks coming from any number of riders, while Sagan has faded, marked out of contention. However, a rider like Sagan also couldn’t fit in at a multifaceted team like Deceuninck-Quick Step, where the collective is bigger than the individual.
In the last 40 years, there have been three clearly defined classics eras, and it looks like that we might be entering a fourth, with the advent of the Van Aert/ Van der Poel rivalry. First, there was Sean Kelly, with the Irishman dominating the monuments in the 1980s, with nine wins across Paris-Roubaix, Liège-BastogneLiège, Milan-San Remo and Il Lombardia, and three second places at the Tour of Flanders. One can’t have much more dominant an era than that, with Kelly also winning a Vuelta a España and finishing in the top 10 of grand tours a further seven times. Kelly and Sagan are often compared as all-round cyclists, but Kelly’s palmarès outshine Sagan’s.
Following Kelly, there was the era of Johan Museeuw, with the Belgian winning three each of Roubaix and Flanders, and managing to win a World Championship road race as well. His great adversary was Peter Van Petegem, who won two Rondes and one ParisRoubaix. The pair won five Tours of Flanders between 1993 and 2003.
Then came the defining era of this century so far, with Boonen and Cancellara combining to win 13 cobbled monuments together, out of a possible 20, between 2005 and 2014. That’s how you define an era, with Boonen’s four Roubaix wins and three Rondes added to Cancellara’s three and three, respectively.
Next came the Sagan era. Or did it? He has had 16 top-10 finishes at San Remo, Flanders, and Roubaix between 2012 and Sagan has cut through by leveraging his personality. He is a showman, and the only rider to transcend the sport in recent years
114
Career wins for Sagan so far
17
Grand tour stage wins
2020. That’s a strike rate of 55 per cent in these races. For context, Boonen finished in the top 10 50 per cent of the time, and Cancellara 57 per cent.
Furthermore, Sagan has been more than a monuments man, with his three world titles and seven Tour green jerseys adding something different that other classics riders have not. Perhaps we are looking at Sagan between the wrong parameters: His two monument wins so far are well behind Boonen and Cancellara, for example, but Sagan has cut through by leveraging his personality; he’s not just a winner, he is a showman. He is the only rider to have truly transcended the sport in recent years - which other non-anglophone rider could have released a book in English and signed copies for adoring fans in London when it was released?
He will be remembered for rarely ever wearing a standard team jersey, for those wheelies, for his individuality which seemed to cut through a very ordered sport. Plus, he’s only just turned 31, giving him time to go on a valedictory winning streak, while he still has the chance to get his hands on the record for most world titles if he wins a fourth.
What would confirm Sagan’s place in the history books? Another world title, or a Milan-San Remo, perhaps. In a sport like cycling, where a sole rider is allowed to stand on the podium, it is very tricky to emerge as the dominant figure, and yet Sagan has managed it.