Cycling superstar Peter Sagan plans to race the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia this season, but plans to skip most of the one-day classics, he told a news conference on Tuesday.
The Team Bora-Hansgrohe leader said that an eighth green jersey awarded for being the best sprinter at the Tour is this season’s main target, while respecting a promise to race the Giro just 13 days later is important to him as a person.
“Yes, it’s green and pink,” Sagan confirmed when asked if his main season came down to the double bid of the Tour and the Giro, where the leader wears the revered pink jersey.
Photo: AFP
The program means that Sagan, known for exceptional endurance, would race a staggering 42 Grand Tour stages in just 58 days, as the original cycling calendar has been crammed into a few months following the coronavirus lockdown.
“I promised them [the Giro] before the date changed and I really want to respect that promise,” the 30-year-old said.
The Tour, where Sagan plans to target a record eighth title for the most sprint points, runs from Aug. 29 to Sept. 20. Then, Sagan would embark on the first stage of the Giro on Oct. 3.
Sagan’s German team have emerged as a major player in cycling, just behind Britain’s Team Ineos and the Netherland’s Team Jumbo-Visma.
At the Tour, Bora-Hansgrohe would be led by German climber Emanuel Buchmann, after his fourth place overall result in last year’s edition, and would also field this year’s Paris-Nice winner Maximilian Schachmann.
“It’s the Tour then the Giro, if the world championships are in Switzerland in between, that will be too hard for me and I’ll skip it,” Sagan said.
The former three-time world champion said he might change his mind on the world championships if the location of the race is moved away from the mountains, which is a possibility.
“You cannot have everything in this world,” Sagan added. “Sometimes you have to make hard decisions.”
He confirmed that his first competitive race would be the Strade Bianche classic in Italy on Aug. 1, saying that his main one-day racing target would be to win the Milan-San Remo on Aug. 8.
“The Strade, I’m going as part of my preparation,” he said. “If I can try something, I will. I’ll be really ready for Milan.”
Bora-Hansgrohe team manager Ralph Denk earlier in the day said: “We want to win a monument.”
There are five monuments — the very strenuous one-day races — and Sagan has twice come second at the longest of them, the Milan-San Remo.
Sagan said that he would skip the Belgian classics that are to be held during the Giro, and also the Paris-Roubaix, which Sagan won in 2018, but which takes place on the last day of the Giro.
“There’s little risk of the riders [at the Tour] infecting each other,” Sagan said. “It’s sad if the fans aren’t there, but it changes nothing — just that it’s safer, as nobody can crash into a fan or have an accident with one.”
Sagan is the highest earning cyclist in the peloton at US$5 million per year, topping a recent list in L’Equipe, above Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas.
Fickle winds produced farcical scenes yesterday on day two of the America’s Cup challenger series in Auckland, as the so-called “flying” yachts spent almost as much time in the water as above it. “I’m not sure today is a really accurate read because it’s so puffy, it’s shifty,” British sailing legend Ben Ainslie said after his Ineos Team UK maintained their perfect start to the Prada Cup series with a third straight win. The series would determine which of the 23m yachts — which fly above the water balanced on hi-tech foil arms — would challenge defending champion Team New Zealand for
Transgender athletes are to have an ally in the White House next week, as they seek to participate as their identified gender in high school and college sports — although state legislatures, the US Congress and the courts are all expected to have their say this year, too. Attorneys on both sides say they expect US president-elect Joe Biden’s Department of Education to switch sides in two key legal battles — one in Connecticut, the other in Idaho — that could go a long way in determining whether transgender athletes are treated by the sex on their birth certificates or by
DOUBLE VISION: The men’s duo of Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin downed the South Korean pairing of Choi Sol-gyu and Seo Seung-jae to secure their place in the final Taiwan’s Tai Tzu-ying yesterday easily defeated Mia Blichfeldt in her women’s singles match to advance to the finals of the Yonex Thailand Open in Bangkok, while Chou Tien-chen crashed out of the tournament. Tai quickly ousted world No. 18 Blicheldt, of Denmark, in 34 minutes, winning 21-8, 23-21. The world No. 1 today must overcome Olympic champion Carolina Marin of Spain, who took down An Se-young of South Korea yesterday 21-18, 21-16. In men’s singles, Taiwan’s Chou fell to Hong Kong’s Angus Ng Ka Long after a tough 66 minutes of play. While Chou, the world No. 2, bested Ng in the first set,
DOUBLES VICTORY: The men’s doubles pairing of Taiwanese Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin downed Malaysians Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi, and face South Koreans today Men’s badminton world No. 2 Chou Tien-chen yesterday marched into the semi-finals of the Thailand Open, defeating younger opponent Lee Zii-jia 21-17, 21-15 after a rally, while Tai Tzu-ying had no trouble getting past her Canadian opponent in the women’s singles. The top male Taiwanese credited calm and focus in securing his win after briefly falling behind against his 22-year-old Malaysian opponent. “I think I had more patience against him and I won most of the long rallies,” the 31-year-old Chou said of Lee. “He wanted to attack [too much] and maybe he lost some focus,” Chou said. In today’s semi-finals, second-seeded Chou faces
RSS