by Peter Sagan
So. Operation Rio was greenlit. Me and Gabriele packed our bags and flew to Park City, Utah. Until now the summer of 2016 had been hot, hard and fun. For the next few weeks it was going to be hot and fun but only as hard as we wanted it to be.
I didn’t get those 400 miles of trails in Park City all to myself though. No. There was a new contender on the horizon. A man for whom no obstacle was too great, no mountain too high, no descent too frightening. Who was this superhero? Surely not Gabriele, the mild-mannered manager … on an electric bike.
I couldn’t shake him off. I’d blast up a hill in the thin Utah atmosphere and there he’d be, grinning from ear to ear.
Those few weeks … it was like I was 18 in Žilina again. Magical. We’d concocted this plan because it seemed like fun, but here I was, chock-full to the gills of the first new motivation I’d had in seven years. Don’t get me wrong, I love road racing. It’s the life I’ve chosen and it’s been amazing to me. But the calendar leaves your life prescribed. Press conferences bring the same dull questions every day. You remember the streets, the corners, the hills, and your successes or your failures just drive you to do it again and do it better each time. But this was different. It was new, and I hadn’t done ‘new’ for a long time.
By the time we were jetting to Rio, I was as pumped as I’d ever been. Bouncing off the walls. Remembering the booming midnight music coming through the paper-thin walls of the London Olympic Village, sharing a room with young guys you’ve never met and the constant efforts of boy trying to meet girl, Giovanni, Gabriele and Specialized had shunned the Rio Olympic equivalent and come up trumps. We had a beautiful apartment to ourselves on the beach. Every night we put our feet up, drank fresh coconut milk straight from the shell, and reminded ourselves just how bloody lucky we were.
A fortnight ahead of the Games, we hooked up with Christoph Sauser. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a roadie and don’t know who Christoph is. Take it from me: the man is an MTB legend. Hailing from Switzerland, he won a medal at the Sydney Olympics, was World Champion in 2008, and best of all won the aptly named Cape Epic in South Africa no fewer than five times. He’s retired – a couple of times, like George Foreman or Frank Sinatra – since then but the man is still a mean rider. Above and beyond all that, he is Mr Specialized when it comes to mountain biking, and my bike suppliers were pulling out all the stops to help me in Rio. Thank you, Specialized: riding with Christoph wasn’t just useful, it was bloody brilliant.
Christoph was pleased with how little pace I’d lost over my years away from the fat tyres, and it was true, each ride was like going from beginner to expert in an hour, brilliant fun. I’d wobble and dab my foot in the first couple of corners, then on the way back down I’d be sliding sideways down a huge scree slope with 100 per cent control. I’d race round the banked planks of north shore corners with ten metre drops on either side like I was descending the Poggio.
The papers in Slovakia ran stories about how I was flash. Too important to slum it with the man in the street any more. Fame had gone to my head and money had changed me. You know what? They were right. Money had changed me. It had given me responsibility and it had given me the means and the desire to do things right. I owed it to everybody who had helped me – with money, frequently – to do my best to fulfil the promise they’d seen in me. And if that meant not sharing a frat house with dozens of teenagers bursting with testosterone, oestrogen, rave music and McFlurries, then that wasn’t the worst plan I could come up with.
I kicked Gabri’s sorry ass at FIFA on the PS4 every single night. He paid for dinner every night as a result, so don’t take any of that rubbish he spins about letting me win for the sake of my morale. That might wash sometimes, but not when putting his hand in his pocket is the price. Not every night. Not the Gabriele I know.
Race time. The circuit was fun but tricky. It was also really hard to overtake, a bit like Formula One. Technical, narrow, with loads of obstacles that required total concentration, certainly not things that you could ignore while trying to pass another guy. It was fun because of the tricks you had to pull, and amusing stuff like sand traps in the shape of Havaianas flip-flops.
Another Formula One similarity was the grid start line, and this was my first and most serious problem. Not being a regular MTB racer, I had no form and no points to give me a start position. If it had really been like F1, we could have turned the whole race into a week’s worth of testing and qualifying, but they’re obviously not as savvy as those crafty media manipulators in motor racing, and I had to start where my non-existent world ranking said I should be. At the back.
When I say the back, stone cold last would give you the most accurate picture. There were 50 guys between me and the start line. By the time I crossed it, the clock would have been ticking, wheels spinning, people cheering and the front riders disappearing into the middle distance. Sounds bad? If it had been a World Cup race there might have been as many as 200 guys separating me from my clear destiny as Olympic MTB Champion.
The first section of the lap was inside the stadium they had built to give spectators the best view. There were some backwards and forwards sections, a bit like the queue at passport control, but it was wide and fast, unlike the course proper. I knew that once the stadium was behind us, overtaking would be a hundred times more difficult than in that first 60 seconds of a one-and-a-half-hour race.
For one of the first occasions in my career, I had a plan. As we lined up, each guy wiggling a little bit to get the best position, but kept in line by the officials trying to keep it fair, I went the other way. I backed up about three metres behind the penultimate line of riders. With the other 50-odd starters wedged into a five-metre space, I looked ridiculous. I imagined them sniggering at the dickhead roadie who was scared of getting knocked off in the free for all. The countdown started at ten. At five, I clicked into my right pedal. At three, I set off, clicking into the other pedal and going hell-for-leather through the startled lines of those patiently waiting. I thought: it can’t be a false start. I haven’t crossed the start line, right?
After three turns of the stadium I was in third place. The guys who started on the front of the grid were in about twentieth. I don’t know much about MTB racing, it’s true, so I’m ready for somebody to explain to me some day what their strategy was.
Mine was clear. Relax. Take it easy. There were seven laps ahead of us and the first one would be the fastest. Breathe, see how it’s going, don’t kill yourself. Follow the wheel of somebody good – if he was second in the Olympic MTB Race, he was probably pretty decent – and see how the pros do it. It’ll open out later. And the last time I had to fight for the finish of an important race after an hour and a half, I’d probably been about 15. I reckoned that if it came to a late fight on the last lap I’d back myself to have something left in the tank. Stay in contention. As José Mourinho would say: stay in the game.
Lap 1 went pretty well. I went through the pits and gave my guys a confident nod. That would be the last time that day that anything went well.
Immediately after the pits I got a tricky section wrong and totally shredded my front tyre on some big sharp rocks. Mountain-bike racing comes from a long history of self-sufficiency. In my junior days, we’d hear stories of professionals stuffing grass into their tyres to fix punctures or finishing races with only one side of their handlebars. The legacy of this proud tradition is that you’re not allowed service or outside help on the circuit except at the two designated pit areas. And you’re not allowed to go backwards. Shit.
I ran half a lap with a flat front tyre. You know that old joke about your tyre only being flat at the bottom? Well, mine wasn’t. It was flapping about like a seagull with a broken wing. So I ran like a muppet for about two and a half kilometres to reach the other pit area. During that time I discovered that it was actually quite easy to overtake someone out on the circuit after all. Just make sure he was the Slovakian bloke pushing his bike while everybody else is riding their
s.
I hopped back on occasionally and jumped off when it got bumpy. It was properly messed up when I got my new wheel and I was relieved to feel like a cyclist rather than a moronic street entertainer again. I was in about twentieth, I guessed. I faced up to the reality that it was unlikely that the 19 or so men in front of me were all bad enough to get caught by me, but thought that I could maybe make the Top 10 and regain some dignity.
I got back up to the Top 10 and breathed hard. Not so bad. Let’s see how high we can go. I went through the pits and gave them another nod. And then I flatted again!
This one was really annoying and totally avoidable. It was a slow puncture in the rear and it dawned on me agonisingly that I’d actually sustained it before the pits. If I’d been a bit more on the ball I could have had a bike swap in seconds. As it was, I was back to running for another delightful half a lap.
Have you ever run in mountain bike shoes? The cleat is recessed into the sole to allow you to walk about in them, whether you’ve punctured at the Olympics, need to climb over a gate or just go into the café for a slice of cake. Running is another matter as there is no flex in the sole whatsoever. You can’t spring like in running shoes, your heel rubs like crazy as your foot bends but the shoe doesn’t, and there’s always a good chance of twisting your ankle on a rock. I was just thinking that when I twisted my ankle on a rock.
I finished thirty-fifth, a lap behind the winner and Christoph’s countryman, Nino Schurter.
For five minutes I was spitting mad. Gabri knows better than to come near me when I’m angry. Better than that, he knows to keep everybody else away too, and for that I am always grateful. He’s always a good friend, but great friends are there when you need them most, and that’s him. But after that five minutes, I had a sudden memory of the look on all of the other riders’ faces at the start when I began charging through them all after my starting run-up. I couldn’t help but laugh.
People said I was unlucky, but mountain bikers know that punctures aren’t luck, they’re things you need to be a good enough bike rider to avoid if you want to win races. And I hadn’t been good enough. Strong enough? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s immaterial. You don’t win races just by being strong, otherwise it would be Body, Burghardt, Giovanni or Yates sitting here telling you about their rainbow jerseys. You’ve got to be strong, sure, but there’s other stuff you need, and in Rio I didn’t have it.
So it wasn’t my destiny to be Olympic Mountain Bike Champion after all. But we had a bloody good laugh.
Back at the coast, I was watching TV and suddenly up pops Greg Van Avermaet, Olympic Road Race Champion. Holy shit! Greg won the road race! And it was days ago, I’d been so wrapped up in myself that I hadn’t even thought about it. Gabriele and Giovanni had sad smiles on their faces. They’d known, but didn’t want to tell me. They thought that if I’d seen GVA had won, then I would have felt that maybe I could have beaten him, that maybe it wasn’t a climber’s race after all. Jesus. That didn’t bother me in the slightest. What bothered me was that Greg had been Olympic Road Race Champion for two weeks and I hadn’t rung him to congratulate him. He must have thought I was a proper dick.
2016
AUTUMN
There was only a week between the Olympic Mountain Bike Race and Plouay, so we found ourselves somewhat hastily on a flight back across the Atlantic. I had plenty of time to reflect on the Rio experience.
My thoughts inevitably wandered to the Olympic Road Race, now that I’d heard how it all panned out. Had Gabriele and Giovanni been justified in worrying that I would think I’d made a mistake in not riding it?
I weighed it up. From what I could see, Vincenzo Nibali had been the race’s true animator, and his crash on what had proved to be a genuinely dangerous circuit was the day’s pivotal moment. He fell with Sergio Henao, another climber with medal aspirations, and Richie Porte had gone the same way a bit earlier. The race was turned on its head, and Greg Van Avermaet had ridden such a strong race that he was able to grab it by the scruff of the neck and become Olympic Champion, a truly remarkable ride by any standards.
Would it have been different if I’d been there? Of course it would. Not because of my presence, but because no two races are ever the same. Nibali hardly ever crashes. Even then, Henao is strong enough to go alone, but he also went down. If the chasers include Greg and me, nobody else is going to work with us to bring it back. Basically, it’s the old hundred riders with a hundred stories narrative, all taking place on a course that nobody’s used to racing on that can throw you head first into a tree at 90 kmh. Greg is the Olympic Champion, should be the Olympic Champion and that’s it.
That got me thinking about cycling more generally and what we go through.
In the women’s race, Annemiek van Vleuten was soloing to what looked like a certain gold, when the horrible Vista Chinesa descent put paid to her dreams, and very nearly a lot more. That she was at trackside the next day was simply unbelievable for many people who’d seen her hit the road with such a sickening impact and feared the worst. Cycling, eh? I was following the women’s Liège–Bastogne–Liège and saw Marianne Vos when she needed a plate and screws inserted in her shoulder after a crash there. She finished the race, though. What a hardcore bunch we are.
I went straight to Plouay, a small village in the heartlands of French cycling, Brittany. Bernard Hinault is the epitome of a Breton cyclist: proud, strong and indomitable. Despite the unpretentious surroundings and its many incarnations – I think it was officially called the GP Bretagne Ouest France in 2016 – the race is universally known after the host village. They had the World Championships here in 2000. It rained.
In 2016 it rained too, but not all day. What goes on all day is that you spend six hours climbing and descending on country lanes in showers and gales on a twisty circuit until you can’t work out whether you’re coming and going.
Except that I wasn’t coming or going. I was sick. Totally empty with my head spinning, wobbling all over the road. I abandoned after 50 kilometres. I should really have just missed it all together and gone directly to Monaco, but I had promised Oleg and that mattered to me. Plus, my credit on the Faustian Pact that a green jersey and three Tour stages had bought me had now been wiped out by my Olympics flop.
The next part of the deal was two wins in the two Canadian World Tour races. The first was 12 days away. I lay in bed in Monaco for a week, sweating and puking. I don’t get sick often, but when I do, it’s usually at this time of year. Holding form from the cold northern spring through the three weeks of the Tour at the height of the summer is hard, but if you go on racing afterwards, especially if it involves a lot of travel, your card is marked. Coming back to a cold wet Europe from tropical South America when your system is depleted is always going to be a risk. Anyway, it is what it is. I spent a week off the bike. Unheard of. When I surfaced the following Monday, Sylwester and Oscar Gatto, my neighbour in Monaco, persuaded me to get the Monaco MTB out of the garage and trundle around a little bit of the Riviera with them. It was horrible. I was so weak. And I was meant to be winning a race on the other side of the Atlantic on Friday.
Sylwester said: ‘Just finish. Oleg won’t be disappointed if you go over there and do your best for the team and the jersey.’ Yeah, I thought, but ‘just finishing’ isn’t straightforward when it’s 200 kilometres over a tricky little circuit with riders desperately chasing World Tour ranking points and Michael Matthews, Tom Boonen and GVA are all using it as a dry run for the Worlds. I’ll go with ‘just fly out there’. Then I’ll maybe stretch to ‘just start’. And then we’ll see how close we get to ‘just finish’.
I like Canada, it has a very chilled vibe, with nothing to prove. Quebec City is the most European city outside of Europe that I’ve ever been to, so I felt totally at ease there. We flew in on Wednesday, spent Thursday doing press and as little as possible. I felt like shit, so I just got the bike out to check it was working, really. My legs certainly weren’t.
Fortuna
tely, Friday was a lovely day, and I got through the ‘just start’ part of the equation a bit creakily but acceptable. A break of eight went away and the race settled down. You know what? I started to feel all right. I ate more on the bike than I had at home for a week. The pedals started turning in ever-smoother circles. With 15 kilometres to go, I surprised myself by riding up to the front of the race and thinking … I reckon I could do something here.
Oleg’s drive for top spot meant that we’d travelled with a really strong Tinkoff team. Oscar had come with me from Monaco, and there was an engine room with Body, Kreuziger and Kolář stomping away. To their surprise, I gave them the nod and they began to exert their power on the sharp end of the race. I didn’t know at the time, but the 2016 Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec was going to be one of the most exciting finishes I’d been involved in.
There were little moves forming and coming back off the front, but when Gianni Moscon slipped off with a Quick-Step duo, it looked very dangerous. I gambled on not going as hard as possible on the last lap, as I knew the straight up to the line was hard and into the wind. It wasn’t a dissimilar finish to the Worlds circuit at Richmond, but I thought that it would be hard to stay away in that breeze. Rigoberto Urán was the defending champion and he launched one of those trademark slow wind-up moves near the top of the climb, passed the Quick-Step guys, went round Moscon and lined up the drag to the line. Watching it now on YouTube, it’s hard to believe that with 200 metres to go he could lose. But that finish is really, really hard, and suddenly you see the pack slip into the picture.
As you know, in a headwind sprint, my aim is always to stay covered up for as long as possible. But that wasn’t going to work today, because Anthony Roux was sprinting all out into that wind and I was worried that he wasn’t going to catch Urán. I came off his wheel with Greg Van Avermaet on mine earlier than I wanted, but this was one day that had just got better and better the longer it had gone on. I passed Urán with a few metres to go and Greg just couldn’t get around me. Outgoing World Champion first, incoming Olympic Champion second. That’s a good race.
