My World

by Peter Sagan

  And if you think I had to look that up, then maybe I did, just to check, but it saved you doing it, didn’t it?

  Another, more accurate, name for a Jerusalem artichoke is a sunroot, and this is where this whole baffling section might start to make a bit more sense. My wife Katarina has started a company with her father called Sunroot. It’s a range of gluten-free, zero-fat foods all based around a core foodstuff made from Jerusalem artichokes. The plant is grown and harvested widely in Slovakia so it’s an effective enterprise to boost the local economy, make something genuinely useful, and give Katarina an outlet for her creative and business-minded brain. They do all sorts of stuff: hot chocolate powder, blueberry jam, yogurt-coated snacks, white-chocolate-coated fruit drops … but the most useful thing is a flour that you can use for all your usual baking. Sunroot also has the benefit of being naturally sweet, so it doesn’t need sugar added to it in a lot of recipes. Cakes without getting fat. Yes!

  The other thing sunroot does is grow like wildfire, so much so that it can take over if you don’t keep an eye on it, a bit like rhododendron does in parts of Europe. Like rhododendron, it looks pretty so people don’t clear it. This got up the nose of one particular Slovak politician to such a degree that he got a law passed to have it banned. Can you see a pattern emerging here? Naturally, that would have been Katarina’s business down the drain without a backwards glance, but fortunately there are a lot of farmers, growers and sellers of sunroot in Slovakia so he eventually backed down. The politician probably proposed the law because his neighbour’s garden was overgrown. As you know by now, that’s how things tend to work over in Slovakia.

  If you put Jerusalem artichoke into Google, you’ll get the description I gave you at the top of this chapter. If you put sunroot into Google there’s a good chance you’ll get Katarina and me pretending to be Olivia Newton John and John Travolta as Sandy and Danny in Grease. We did it as a promotional thing for Sunroot, but we also did it for a laugh. Why so serious? We’ve always had daft ideas. One of the benefits of being UCI World Champion is that you can get away with doing them. Actually, that’s not quite right … we still would have done it, but us doing our own private Lip Sync Battle in the kitchen isn’t quite as much fun as getting a crew in to recreate the fairground set for ‘You’re the One That I want’, and getting it edited shot-by-shot to match the original.

  Katarina and I met at my house in Žilina. Actually, let me backtrack a little bit. When we managed to start getting paid to ride bikes and when we weren’t at the Liquigas flat in Italy, Juraj and I had got ourselves a house in between the motorway and the huge bend in the River Vah as it widens into the Hricov lake. They started building a bridge across it there shortly before we got the house. I was there recently and they’ve just finished the bridge ten years on. I love Slovakia, but it makes me smile.

  I had the bit of land that adjoined it too, and I was starting to earn a bit more money. I had a couple of cars by then, so I thought I’d build a garage for them on this land. That’s all. Then I thought I might like my own place to sleep, so it should have a bedroom above the cars. That’s all I’d need. Then, often when I come back to Slovakia, I’ll have a friend travelling with me, so I should get a guest room. That’d be enough. But then, if I was back in the winter, which can be pretty dark and cold in Žilina, I might want a gym and a sauna in the loft to keep fit. That’s all a man needs.

  In the end, the whole project morphed completely and we ended up not building a house for ourselves at all. Instead it became the basis for the sports centre I’ve been trying to establish. Young Slovakian athletes from all different sports can go there to live, train and generally get the support they need to make the step from keen youngster to full-time sportsmen or -women.

  But before we knew that would happen, Juraj and I put out a tender for a few local companies to quote on doing the building. One guy I particularly liked ran a little construction company with his father and they seemed pretty sorted. After meeting them in the winter of 2012, I went off for my first concerted crack at the Classics and came back with a fifth, fourth, third and second place to my name. The third was at Amstel Gold in Holland, after which Juraj and I had a spring barbecue party at our place to celebrate. As it was next to the plot where this garage/bachelor pad would be going up, I invited the construction guy to the party to hang out with us and talk about the project. He turned up with this girl who instantly made a bit of an impression on me: tall, beautiful, but with a confident way about her that seemed to suggest there was more to her world than a construction company in Žilina. I was just thinking that he was a lucky bastard, when he introduced her as his sister. Happy days.

  Things didn’t happen between us immediately, but I texted her a few times and she texted back, and before too long people started to realise that we were seeing each other.

  Katarina – you’d worked that out I hope – was very well travelled, having worked for DHL, and had lived in Australia. She had friends everywhere: Belgium, Holland, Czech Republic, Poland. Wherever I went she seemed to know someone, so after a while I said: ‘If you think you might want to be with me, come and see my life. Come and see what it’s like.’

  It was a great time. In 2013 I had my best spring so far, picking up my first Classic at Gent–Wevelgem and my first Monument podiums with second places at Milan–San Remo and Tour of Flanders. Travelling with Katarina shone a new light on everything and I felt stronger for having her point of view and support alongside me.

  The problem was the problem that all of us face at some point: time. Some of us have not enough, some too much. At that point, it was certainly the former, with the training, racing, commercial responsibilities, family, friends and girlfriend all deserving a bigger chunk of my attention than they were getting. We started picking races to go to together so we could enjoy a bit more: no quick turnarounds, no training camps, no long transfers. The Tour of California was a perfect place for us, providing the chilled-out lifestyle we both wanted. We could carry on and be together at a relaxed personal altitude training camp in Utah or Tahoe. The Tour Down Under is a great place to go too, and usually the World Championships as you’re in the same place for a few days and in the more informal atmosphere of the national team rather than a sponsored outfit with professional demands.

  We decided that the Classics would be too much. Maybe, say, Paris–Roubaix, or Flanders, but to do the whole period together would be too intense. The same thing goes for the Tour de France. A stage here or there is fun and something to look forward to in the middle of the madness of the Tour, but you get dragged into the routine grind if you do it all the time and that’s no good for either of us.

  There’s also the team and my teammates to think of. Togetherness is important in any team in any sport. At some point, you’ll need to rely on each other and the unique pro-cycling system of first among equals will be put to the test. There wasn’t room on the Tour, for instance, for nine riders to bring their families along for the ride, let alone the directors’, mechanics’ and soigneurs’ families. Plus, much of the communication and planning at big races takes place when you sit around the breakfast table or dinner table. Big team training camps were not ideal places for us to go together for those reasons, too.

  I also realised that, more and more, I needed a sanctuary in my life. Somewhere that specifically wasn’t a bike race or a sponsor event or a training camp every once in a while. When I get back to our apartment in Monaco after a gruelling series of races or a convoluted travel plan, the weight just lifts from my shoulders when I see Katarina there.

  The world outside cycling has got even more insane for me lately, due to four different things. The first three are the rainbow jerseys I brought home from America, the Middle East and Scandinavia. The fourth is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, and his name is Marlon. The first three have incrementally heaped more attention on our little family, especially in Slovakia, where, as I have said before, we are a young country short
on national heroes. Having a world champion in any sport is something we’re not used to, and getting one in a global sport like cycling three years running is understandably a big deal for us, but when they run out of things to write about me, they just make stuff up. It’s pretty irritating.

  These days, back in Slovakia, if I want to go out with friends for a few beers at a nightclub, everyone will tell me that we’ll have to have the club closed just for us, because once word gets around everybody will be piling into the club and piling over to us for pictures, autographs, chat, all sorts. I don’t mind that, I always try to be polite and I genuinely can’t remember a time that I’ve turned down requests for selfies and autographs, but sometimes you just want to relax with friends, you know? It also means being on your best behaviour 24/7, or you’ll wake up the next morning and see an awful photo of yourself looking worse for wear at three in the morning. Of course, this rule doesn’t apply to the people who want to join you at that time of night, and the later it gets, the drunker they tend to be, and the more awkward the situation. To be honest with you, it ends up that you just don’t go out.

  It’s the same when Katarina and I go out for a meal. You usually like to do that kind of thing when you’ve been apart for a little while, just to relax together, catch up on what’s been happening in the worlds that we share but sometimes only overlap. Once again, there will be requests for signatures and photographs with us, which is fine; people tend to be a lot more polite and respectful in a restaurant than in a bar or club. It gets more difficult when you’re trying to talk about what you’ve been doing, who’s been doing what, or maybe make plans for the coming days and weeks, and you feel people’s ears on neighbouring tables pricking up and sense them leaning in a bit closer, hoping to pick up a nugget of information. Once again, you end up eating at home.

  Marlon has just focused my resolve to keep my family safe from that. I’m not planning on any celebrity magazine spreads of our home life, pictures of him in the latest toddler fashions on the news or scenes of him in his school uniform with paparazzi outside the school gates on his first day.

  Monaco helps. I was talking to a friend from London the other day about living in Richmond – yes, the London Richmond – and he was talking about seeing Mick Jagger in the pub or Pete Townshend in the supermarket and people not really taking any notice. That’s the Monaco effect. I’m small fry here when you’re living alongside Lewis Hamilton and Ringo Starr. Residents are used to seeing recognisable faces around and tend not to get so excited.

  I think that when it’s time for him to go to school here, Marlon will find it easier to fit in and not get hassled. It’s very international and everybody is treated respectfully and similarly. French schools – the Monegasque system adopts French education – have a great reputation for instilling good self-esteem and respect for others, while letting kids find their own way.

  I think that’s what this is about, to be honest, letting Marlon find his own path. If we can protect him from too much aggravation until he’s old enough to make his own choices about what he wants to do, what he wants to be, who he wants to hang out with, then we’ll have done OK. I don’t want him wrapped up in cotton wool his whole life, I just want to buy him some space, time and freedom if I can. And if he wants to be a cyclist? Well, yes, riding a bike is fun, but I think there are easier ways to earn a few euros.

  Growing up, there was nothing that my parents wouldn’t do for any of us: Milan, the eldest; the middle one, Juraj; my sister Daniella; or me, the baby of the family and spoilt by everybody. I have my Mum to thank for the incredible sacrifices she had to make in order to raise four children. Thanks to her we were fed, educated and raised as adults with big hearts and an important sense of principle. Whilst we weren’t by any means well-off, we didn’t want for anything because our welfare was so evidently her main concern. There’s no doubt that when I’m praised for actions off the bike, it is Mum who must take the credit.

  It was my Dad, L’ ubomír, who buttoned back his protective instincts and encouraged me to venture forth into the great outdoors. He would always be there and wanted full reports on everything we’d done. When Juraj and I started racing, he loaded everything we needed in the family car and shuttled us round the country. Then out of the country … the Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, even Germany. The packed car really made for quite a scene – kit, clothes, food, bikes on the roof, and then somehow Juraj and I would be wedged in amongst it all. It might not have been the most comfortable, but it was an adventure every weekend. I never questioned how we could afford it, or what plans and dreams he had of his own. He was still a young man.

  I remember going to a mountain bike race somewhere in Europe and there was this incredible downhill course with enormous jumps and breathtaking drop offs. I was desperate to have a go on it, but Dad said no. That was pretty rare, so I listened, and didn’t sulk too much.

  My oldest brother, Milan, was my hero. He still is. He knew everything, knew everyone, could do anything, could go anywhere. You just knew that Milan would do all right in this world. He was just like a younger version of my dad: confident without being cocky, popular with everyone, but always with a bit of mischief in him. He also made a valuable contribution to my early career decision-making. Back in the day, when I was first offered a place on the Liquigas squad, it wasn’t a given that I’d accept. It’s funny to think back now, but the very idea was really quite terrifying. Remember, I was still a young man, a boy really, and joining Liquigas meant leaving home, my family and friends and moving to Italy, an unfamiliar country where I couldn’t speak a word of the local language. No, I’d be much better off staying in the comfort of Slovakia. There’d be other opportunities, no doubt.

  Milan got wind of this and took me to one side.

  ‘I hear you’re thinking about staying put?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You want my advice?’

  Of course I did. He was the wise big brother that I looked up to.

  He slapped me in the face and said, ‘Go pack your things and get yourself to Italy. This is the best opportunity you’ll ever get in your life. If you turn it down you’ll regret it forever.’

  Needless to say, he was right then and he’s right now.

  When I went back to Slovakia recently, we spent the day together. I had some business to sort out and Milan came to all the banks and offices with me. By the time I’d wrapped up all the necessary errands, I didn’t want to leave and it seemed he didn’t want me to go either. In the end, he jumped in the car with us and started heading back from Žilina to the airport in Bratislava, even though that was doubtless going to leave him stranded in the middle of nowhere. Gabri was stressing because we had to catch a flight and we had an English journalist with us. Milan and I made Gabri stop at every single service station on the motorway.

  ‘Gabri, I need a piss.’

  ‘Gabri, I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Gabri, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Gabri, I need another piss.’

  We went into a garage and bought some beers, shaking one up for a couple of strenuous minutes, before handing it generously to the journalist when we got back in the car.

  ‘Gabri, we need to stop again, this guy is soaking wet.’

  In the end, Milan left us at a garage and phoned a friend for a lift back to Žilina. He’s the sort of guy who will always have a friend to do that.

  That morning, I’d taken Gabri to see my sister Daniella. She’s gorgeous, the greatest sister in the world and Slovakia’s best hairdresser – the reason for the visit. He was due a trim and loved how she’d styled his hair last time round. I left strict instructions for Daniella before Milan and I headed off.

  When we got back Gabri was sulking and wearing a hat. I turned to Daniella: ‘Did everything go to plan?’

  ‘Yes. I cut it nice, just as you said. Showed him how he looked in the mirror. He was very pleased. Then I shaved it all off, just like you said.’

  Another person in
Slovakia I miss hugely is my friend Martin. One night we were out in a club. It must have been when I was first winning races, because fellow partygoers were coming up to me for an autograph. I was obliging and good-natured and did all of them, while Martin was constantly taking the piss. ‘Don’t you want my signature, Peter?’ he asked. I called his bluff, pulled down my trousers and he signed my thigh with a marker pen.

  When I returned later that year, we went out again and I said, ‘Hey, Martin, check this out,’ and dropped my trousers again. He was stunned to see his autograph still clearly displayed on my thigh, months later. How come? I’d had it tattooed on. He nearly passed out.

  I thought I’d got one over on him for all time. But when I went home around Christmas after winning my first UCI World Championship in Richmond, he trumped me in a way I don’t think I can ever beat. Martin took off his shirt and turned around. Across his back was a whole panorama shot in full glorious colour of me in my Slovakia kit, giving the victory salute as I won the title. It was my turn to be speechless.

  I had to get another tattoo after my first one because, according to the Italians, one tattoo is unlucky. But then, they are a superstitious bunch. I’ve been on my way to a race with Italian teammates when they’ve seen a black cat, stopped, turned around and gone a much longer way round. If you’re at dinner and they ask you for the salt, you have to put it down for them to pick up, rather than handing it to them. Weird stuff like that.

  Anyway, I got another one. It’s the Heath Ledger version of The Joker with a bit of me thrown in. And what’s he saying? Can’t you guess? Why so serious?

  Then I got my World Championship victories added to my side, so that little list is longer than I’d ever expected. But my favourite shows my fist touching Marlon’s tiny fist when he was really little. It’s lovely. So, depending on whether you count my Worlds tattoo as one or three, I’ve either got four or six. Who knows what might be next?