Peter Sagan (33) is leaving in 2023, and the mythomaniacs are already missing him.
With his nuanced goodbye (he leaves the route, he intends to be an Olympic mountain biker in Paris 2024), we are left orphans. Nobody interprets cycling the way he does.
No one is capable of shining in the spring classics, competing in the Tour of California in May, winning stages of the Tour in July and winning three World Championships in September (2015, 2016 and 2017).
Nobody, not even the ubiquitous Tadej Pogacar.
Nobody stands out like he does on the pavé of Paris-Roubaix, a rotund silhouette on the handlebars, sometimes excessively muscular, sometimes even paunchy, and in that way he leaves behind Fabian Cancellara, Tom Boonen, Tony Martin or Greg van Avermaet (another colossus who has retired in 2023) to fly without looking back.
Fly Sagan, the Slovakian who defends everything and wins everything (124 victories, with notches in the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta), he wins everything except the high mountain stages, because there his excessive physique is an excessive burden, and that's why he limits himself to having a good time and making the others have a good time: mounted in the tail group, Sagan climbs the Alpe d'Huez, circulates among the fans, and sometimes lifts the front wheel, rides the wheelie, and He greets and laughs, and the parish applauds him.
He excelled until the last moment, until the Tour de Vendée on October 1, when he focused on working for Sandy Dujardin, his TotalEnergies teammate, before finishing ninth.
Then, now, see you on the mountain bike circuits.
–I have to invent something –he has been saying there, at other times, for example on the eve of Paris-Roubaix in 2018, the day of his monument.
He would win that race, the one that crosses the Hell of the North (2.4 km of cobblestones in the Arenberg forest), and he would do it in a crazy way: he left 54 km from the finish line and only Silvan Dillier could accompany him, defeated in the sprint .
Other times, in 2016, he tried things in the Tour of Flanders. He hit a big plate and reached Kiatkowski, beat Vanmarcke and marked the field for Cancellara:
–You don't catch me today.
And so it was: maddened, Cancellara engaged in a fabulous chase that was fruitless, and episodes like that began to forge the legend of Sagan.
Sagan's goodbye has eclipsed the goodbyes of another range of important cyclists.
In 2023, the same Greg van Avermaet (38), big on the bicycle, Olympic gold on the road in Rio 2016, champion of the Paris-Roubaix in 2017, and also Thibaut Pinot (33), skinny and sharp, in the antipodes of Sagan and Van Avermaet, a textbook climber, one of the last hopes of the French amateur, with his third place in the 2014 Tour, a milestone that he has never repeated.
In Spain, Imanol Erviti (39), a generous squire who has worked hard for others, has retired.
