NOS Cycling•today, 2:54 PM
Peter Sagan returns as a road cyclist. The 2015, 2016 and 2017 world champion will start next week in the Tour of Hungary, which starts on Wednesday, May 8. This was reported by his team Pierre Baguette Cycling, where Sagan’s brother Juraj is the sporting director.
At the end of last year, Sagan had announced his retirement as a road cyclist, because he wants to participate as a mountain biker in the Olympic Games in Paris next summer.
Heart operations
Heart problems disrupted Sagan’s mountain bike ambitions. He underwent two operations earlier this year after being diagnosed with an abnormally high heart rate. These operations were successful and the cyclist immediately expressed his wish to cycle again “within a few days”.
The now 34-year-old Sagan still has a small chance of reaching the Games as a mountain biker. However, his country Slovakia will not receive entry tickets for the mountain bike race, so Sagan must hope for one Universality Place, a kind of wild card.
Such a special starting ticket can be allocated by an Olympic committee to an athlete from a smaller country, in order to make the competition more ‘diverse’. It is unclear whether Slovakia and Sagan qualify for this.
Sagan is known as one of the most eccentric cyclists of recent years. He was regularly the center of attention because of his funny statements and antics on the bike, but also because of his sporting achievements.
For example, no cyclist has won the green jersey so often in the Tour de France, which is awarded to the person who collects the most sprint points. Sagan won that seven times. He also won no fewer than twelve stages in the Tour and won a classic such as Paris-Roubaix in 2018.
