by Peter Sagan
It was the same one-two on Sunday in Montreal on a slightly hillier circuit where I’d won previously in 2013. The same one-two? Oh, OK. Same one-two, but different order. Incoming Olympic Champion first, outgoing World Champion second. Nice ride, GVA.
I like a special jersey. It’s cool. Since my second season as a pro, when I won the Slovakian National Road Race title for the first time, I’ve been entitled to have my own jersey, first as Slovakian Champion, then World Champion. It’s great to step up on to a podium and wear a leader’s jersey in a race or classification, but there is no downside to giving it back because I return to my own champion’s jersey and people know who I am. A friend worked out recently that since I turned professional, I’ve only spent 20 per cent of all my racing days in a straightforward team jersey. Call me proud, call me conceited, what the hell, I think it’s cool.
In 2016 at the Slovakian National Road Race, I was proud for a different reason: Juraj won for the first time. Now we had the World Champion’s jersey and the National Champion’s jersey alongside each other at both the family home and Tinkoff. Since my win in Richmond, my National Champion’s jersey hadn’t been seen in public as I obviously had to wear the rainbow stripes, so I was delighted for Juraj and for Tinkoff, but also for Slovakia, as the colours were flying again.
It did lead me to a slightly darker thought though. When my year in the rainbow stripes was up, I would be going back to the ranks. OK, I will be able to wear the rainbow collar and cuffs of former World Champion on any jersey I wear for the rest of my career, and that’s pretty good. But there’s a lot of former World Champions out there – BMC had virtually a whole team of them at one time! – but only one World Champion. My brother already had the Slovakian jersey. There would be nothing for Peter except a good old-fashioned team strip.
There was something I could do. I hadn’t told Oleg – remember I’d kept something up my sleeve after our pact? – but in 2016 there was going to be the inaugural running of the European Road Championships. I didn’t know who would be going or how hard it would be, but I knew something … it was going to have a jersey. And there is always room in my wardrobe for more jerseys. I had until October before I had to go to Doha and give back the rainbow jersey that was beginning to fade with all the washing it had been getting, then I would be able to prance around for the whole of 2017 in the white with blue bands that the first professional European Champion would be awarded. It was going to be held in my home town, too. Monaco and Nice would host a five-day festival of cycling with the climax being the Elite Road Race on Sunday afternoon. It would be rude not to compete on my own doorstep and it would be cool to be working and at home at the same time for once.
Remember that thing about plans being good but unreliable? Terror struck the town neighbouring my own in July while we were away at the Tour. A monster claiming to represent an ideological cause decided that the best way to aid that cause would be to drive a truck into a crowd on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice and end the lives of 86 happy people enjoying the Bastille Day holiday, ironically the day France celebrates the freedom of the individual. Countless more people had their lives changed forever through injury, fear or bereavement.
Apart from leaving a black cloud hanging over all of us, the most pertinent effect on me was a comparatively mundane one: the European Championships were no longer to be held in Monaco and Nice.
They were moved north, to be held on the course of the annual Coupe de France event, the GP Plumelec in Brittany, just a few miles from my least favourite race, Plouay.
As it turned out, there was a really powerful line-up. Most national federations were using the event as a warm up for the forthcoming Worlds and wanted to replicate the teams and set up as closely as possible.
Now. Here was my problem. I’d promised Oleg that I would ride the Eneco Tour in the low countries. I’d also promised him two wins in Canada. I’d come back with a win and a second place from the two races, which was pretty good, but didn’t leave me in a position to back out of anything else. I’d kept pretty quiet about the European Championships, but there was the fact that the road race was on Sunday afternoon in western France and the Eneco began on Monday morning in the Netherlands, 1100 kilometres away.
I raised it gently with Oleg. Oleg … umm … I think this new European Championships Road Race would be a great thing for us to win. But it clashes with Eneco. Umm … maybe … perhaps …? No way. Not only was the Euros a national team event, so no Tinkoff jerseys in the race, he wouldn’t even reap the benefit of seeing Tinkoff on any jersey if I won, because I was still wearing the rainbow jersey until Oman, and that’s when the team would wind up. On the other hand, Eneco was a race well suited to the team, to me, and had a fistful of late World Tour points on offer.
Fair enough. I could see his logic and, as we’ve established, he paid the bills.
However, he had only demanded that I do Eneco. He hadn’t said I couldn’t ride the Euros.
Plumelec is a small town with a nasty little hill in the middle of it. I rode up it more times than I care to remember that day, as a 13-kilometre circuit was used to stage a 232-kilometre race. I’ll let you work it out, I don’t want to think about it any more than I absolutely have to. Each time we went over the top of the Côte de Cadoudal, there were fewer of us left, until, approaching 4 p.m., I gave it my full effort for the final 100 metres and outsprinted Julian Alaphilippe to become the first professional European Champion. Yes!
The jersey was nice. It was white, with three blue bands of gradually darkening hue, speckled with some random yellow stars. Google me in it and you’ll see me wearing it for 30 seconds on the podium in Plumelec. That remains the only 30 seconds that I’ve ever worn it.
Gabriele and Giovanni were waiting behind the podium with the engine running and my bike in the boot. I jumped in wearing full kit – it had been a nice day, thankfully – and Gabri floored it to the nearest airfield. I remember that they wouldn’t even let me stop for a piss and a Tinkoff bidon had to do the job while he drove.
There was a little plane waiting for me on the runway and that too had the engine running. I’d paid for it myself – asking Oleg or the National Federation would have been taking the piss without the need of a Tinkoff bidon. I hopped on board and we rose into the darkening eastern sky. Far below, I watched Gabriele heading the same way in the car with my bikes and kit. See you tomorrow, my friend.
I met the Tinkoff guys in Holland late that night and slept the kind of sleep that only a newly crowned European Champion can sleep. Thankfully, Stage 1 of the Eneco Tour didn’t begin until a generous 11 a.m., so I had a reasonable amount of time in bed. A lot more than Gabriele … the legend turned up at 9 a.m. looking even more dishevelled than usual. I know he claims to be Italian, but looks can be deceptive. To be fair to the great man, he had spent the entire night behind the wheel to keep the pact alive. I already owed him a lot, now it was going to take something special to repay him.
It’s stories like this that remind you how uniquely crazy cycling is among the pantheon of professional sports. It’s like a camping holiday. There are no stadiums, arenas, courses, theatres or race tracks as in any other global sport you can name. Everything moves every day. Even in other sports where they trot around like a travelling circus, they know where they’re going. F1 loads up its trucks and planes but turns up at Spa or the Nürburgring or Silverstone year in, year out. Jockeys use planes and helicopters to go to three meetings in a day – but when they get there, the track will be familiar. In cycling, you might not even know where the finish line is going to be. Are there corners? Are there hills? How steep are they? Is it narrow? Which way does the wind blow? On the start line of the Worlds once, a journalist asked me if I’d scouted the course. I did that thing where I look at him for a moment before answering. ‘I’m going to ride across that finish line twelve times between now and the finish. That’ll be twelve times more than I’ve ever scouted the route of one of my Tour de France wins. I’l
l figure it out somehow.’
There was one more little story from that funny day in Plumelec. It occurred about halfway through the race when I was clearly fed up.
Ján Valach had called Gabriele at the finish line from the team car.
‘Gabri, we have a problem.’
‘What?’
‘Peter doesn’t want to finish the race. He wants to pack it in and go to Holland now.’
‘OK, don’t worry, I have the answer. Kill Peter. No, tell him that if he doesn’t finish, in fact, if he doesn’t win, I promise to strangle him myself with my bare hands. I haven’t signed up to drive fifteen hours through the night just to watch him pack in, halfway through.’
‘Thanks Gabri, I’ll tell him.’
After my dip in health between Brazil and Canada I was miraculously mining a rich vein of form now. First in Quebec City, second in Montreal and first in Plumelec were followed by two stages and third overall at the Eneco Tour. Considering that there were two time trials among the seven stages, I thought that was pretty good. I don’t know how much of it Gabriele remembers. He was asleep all week.
Oleg, on the other hand, was delighted. I was now the owner of an unassailable lead in the UCI World Tour standings and Tinkoff would end their final season in the peloton with the World Tour No. 1 ranked rider and World Champion. Oleg and me had not seen eye to eye for every minute of every day that we had been together, but my God, he’s missed. A massive character with massive passion for the game and we want him back some day.
Of the 13 wins I’d had in 2016, ten of them were on the World Tour, and I’d first taken the lead in the standings after winning Gent–Wevelgem in March. Alberto, and then Nairo Quintana, had temporarily topped the rankings in the summer with the long tours throwing up plenty of points, but my flourish at the end of the year had put me back on the top step. I dedicated the award to Oleg and the Tinkoff team. It was in no way a solo achievement.
And now there was just one last race to do. My year in rainbow stripes had been one I’d never forget. I wanted it to end in style.
If a World Championships takes place in the desert and nobody is around to see it, has the World Championships really taken place?’ wondered Cycling News in Doha. You could see their point. There was nobody about. It was like a building site where the job is basically finished, but it’s the weekend and the grand opening isn’t until Monday. Or one of those car commercials, where a car looking much the same as the ones in the other car commercials, races through empty streets past pristine buildings in never-ending yellow sunshine. Welcome to Doha. Here are the buildings, here are the steeples, open the doors: where are all the people?
On the plus side, the impressive few dozen people who’d travelled from Slovakia to support me found themselves, by default, the largest and loudest band of supporters at the whole event.
To go with the deathly atmosphere, the race itself was intensely dull.
For once, I felt pretty sorry for the press pack. They were trying to whip up some kind of intrigue or intensity as usual, but there was absolutely zero for them to work with. Here we were in a deserted desert city, the scarcely seen inhabitants oblivious to our presence, a circuit with nothing but sun, sand and wind to define it. Low point: zero metres above sea level. High point: zero metres above sea level. The equivalent of Alpe d’Huez, Arenberg or the Angliru was essentially a flyover.
I didn’t arrive until three days before the race, while the press pack and plenty of the riders had been there a week already. It was like a gang of ducks on a pond hoping that you’re going to throw them some bread, even though you’ve never thrown them any bread before and you’re clearly not carrying any bread.
‘Peter, are you hoping it will be fast from the start and it breaks up early? Please don’t say, “we will see on Sunday”.’
‘Ah. I was going to say, “we will see on Sunday”. Sorry.’
‘Peter, do you feel under pressure as reigning champion to win on Sunday?’
‘No. I’ve won it already. There’s less pressure on me. What do I have to lose?’
‘A rainbow jersey?’
‘I already have one of those.’
There had been so much talk about the heat, about how late it was in the season, about the need to acclimatise. I looked at it like this: the season’s done. This is a one-off outside that. Like a Christmas party or a holiday romance. I just wanted to be at home. I’d been away all year. Go home, chill out, ride normally, arrive as late as possible. Giovanni told me to put my turbo in the sauna and crank up the watts. Jesus, Lomba, it’s meant to be fun. Why so serious?
Out in the desert on the opening remote part of the parcours, the wind blew. Everybody knew that the wind would blow, but somehow, some people with actual designs on winning the race were taken by surprise and found themselves out of contention with 180 kilometres left to race. Bear in mind that most races aren’t even as long as that, this was the biggest target of the second half of the season and anybody in the race had gone through a gruelling selection one way or another to be here. Underestimating the conditions was almost criminally negligent.
I was pretty sure even then that it would come down to a sprint. There wasn’t much point in attacking on a flat, windy, featureless circuit. There were plenty of fast guys left, but at least we would be spared the mess of ten teams and ten long lead-out trains. I reckoned I would probably get top ten and maybe my old maxim of aiming to make the top five in any sprint would be within my grasp. Beyond that? You know what I’m going to say. Any sprint is a lottery.
I had a teammate with me, Michal Kolář. He was only 23, strong as an ox, and a teammate all year round because he was Tinkoff and Slovak. Young, but no novice, after doing a sterling ride at Richmond a year before. I knew I could rely on him at the death, but there was little work needed earlier on, as Daniele Bennati pulled all day on the front for his Italian teammates, Elia Viviani and Giacomo Nizzolo. Mark Cavendish had Adam Blythe with him for GB and the two of them had obviously also decided that it was going to be a sprint and therefore their day. They were glued to my rear wheel like two red, white and blue shadows for 100 kilometres. Tom Boonen and GVA were there with Belgian support riders. Kristoff and Boasson Hagen were there wishing the weather was a bit more Norwegian; as were Michael Matthews and William Bonnet, so there was an awful lot of speed left, even if the numbers were low. It was a shame we couldn’t just forget 150 kilometres of deathly boring bike riding in an oven in front of a crowd of none and just cut straight to the sprint that we’d all tacitly agreed on.
The Belgian and Italian squads are two of those who have seen their chances at many Worlds wrecked by internal rivalries, but these are different times, and, more importantly, Tom, Greg and the Italians are nicer guys than their noxious, preening predecessors who would rather lose to another country than see a rival teammate win.
Being from a smaller nation, I’ve never had that sort of worry. In fact, on this day, I was so relaxed, and with so little to prove that I looked at Michal Kolář and felt a whole different pride run through me. ‘Michal,’ I said to him, ‘this is your time. You can win this. I’ve got one already. They’ll all be looking at me. I’ll lead you out. It’s yours to take.’
It was unfair of me. Michal was revelling in his role as final teammate of the World Champion. He was ready to bury himself to help me win again. He wasn’t ready to win himself, certainly not when he looked around and saw Cav, Tom, Greg, Viviani and Kristoff all grimly focused on their own version of the hundred different stories. I’d just made it 101 stories without serious consideration.
I heard later that Ján Valach had called Gabriele at the finish from the team car.
‘Gabri, we have a problem.’
‘What?’
‘Peter doesn’t want to sprint. He wants to lead Kolář out instead.’
‘OK, don’t worry, I have the answer. Kill Peter. No, wait, kill Michal Kolář. No, wait, just kill both of them.’
Michal was
actually pretty tired and was worried that he was faltering in the heat in the last 20 kilometres. He did what was by far the most useful thing he could have done in the circumstances. He took himself to the front of the race in front of all those champions and ground himself into the swirling, sizzling dust with every last scrap of effort he had left, knowing that if we didn’t keep the pace high, some chancer would launch a late move to draw the sting of the sprinters.
Michal Kolář’s turn was immense and I won’t forget it in a hurry. I remember grinning to myself in wonder like a proud uncle. Pull yourself together, Peter, you’re only 26 yourself! To be honest, the whole race was so forgettable that I’m sitting here now watching it on YouTube with Gabri and Lomba and it’s like seeing it for the first time. I can hardly recall being there, just that sauna heat in your nostrils and dust in your mouth.
Look at that, the Dutch guy Tom Leezer has launched a really good attack. He means it. I remember that somebody went, but I thought it was Terpstra. He was out of sight from my position in the line but I knew it was going to be a close thing if we were going to catch him. Seeing it back, I find it unfathomable that he isn’t following the racing line. Every time they show him, he’s on the wrong side of the road or going all the long way round the outside of a bend. It could have been even closer.
The sprint opens up as he is caught, Tom dominating for Belgium, Nizzolo representing the Italians. I go right, seeing a gap on the rail. Adam Blythe delivers a perfect lead for Cav, but the Manx Missile hesitates for a fraction of a second, perhaps remembering that he’d decided that it was my wheel he was going to follow. He starts to do just that, then flicks back left to try and pass Boonen on his other side. But his race is lost. I have hit the front at the perfect moment and feel it is mine, I know it is mine.
