Career ends in 2023: Peter Sagan - record-breaking pro, entertainer, non-Merckx

The rest day at the Vuelta San Juan falls on 26 January this year. Peter Sagan, who is preparing for the new season there, finds this convenient. The Slovakian celebrates his 33rd birthday on that day. A pleasant coincidence, one might think. But the situation doesn't seem quite so pleasant. This impression is made above all by the man sitting next to Sagan and looking past the camera pointed at the duo. Gabriele Uboldi, Sagan's personal press spokesman, looks saddened and a little upset when his protégé starts talking.

"Today I would like to tell you about my thoughts, my future programme," Sagan begins in Italian. He is reluctant to call what he has to say 'news'. Even if it is nothing less than the announcement of the end of his career, although he doesn't use that word. "This is my last year as a road pro," he says, revealing a certain nervousness, as his hands betray. "I want to concentrate on qualifying for the Olympic mountain bike races."

Mountain biking has always played a major role in Sagan's career. He has already used this year's World Championships in Scotland to get used to terrain other than tarmac roads again. And even at his peak, he skipped the 2016 Olympic road races in Rio so that he could compete in cross country.

Peter Sagan fails at Quick-Step, only to ignite at Liquigas

Sagan was also on the mountain bike at junior level - and was extremely successful. In 2008, he became world and European champion. In the same year, he also took silver at the cyclo-cross world championships and second place on the road at the Paris-Roubaix junior race. However, the youngest of four siblings actually wants to push ahead with his mountain bike career, especially after he failed a test for a contract with Team Quick-Step. According to Slovakian media, team boss Patrick Lefevere said that Sagan was convincing in purely sporting terms. However, he demanded too much money, only spoke his native language and actually only wanted to ride a mountain bike.

It took some persuasion from the family to get Sagan to test with another team on the road. Liquigas was less demanding and initially offered him a trial contract for 2010, which was to pave Sagan's way. The 19-year-old impressed at the Tour Down Under, his first professional race. Above all as a tough dog. After a crash early in the race, Sagan had to have 17 stitches in his left arm and thigh. Despite this, he still finished third and fourth on two stages. A month and a half later, he followed this up with two extremely powerful sprints at Paris-Nice, his first victories as a professional.

But that was just the beginning. After five victories in his first season, he tripled his tally a year later. And not just in the sprint: Sagan also won the queen stage of the Tour de Suisse and the overall classification of the Tour of Poland. In 2012, Sagan reached the top of the podium 16 times. Among other things, the 22-year-old Slovakian makes four-time time trial world champion Fabian Cancellara look old in his Swiss homeland over a seven-kilometre prologue. So he is also up against the clock.

>> Peter Sagan's most spectacular victories

Peter Sagan doesn't want to be Eddy Merckx

His team-mate at Liguigas, Ivan Basso, is tempted to use big words at this time. "I've never seen a rider like him. I don't think any of us have," said the Italian at a press conference. He is a prototype. A type of rider, an all-rounder, like perhaps Wout van Aert is today. Of course, comparisons with Eddy Merckx were also quickly made. But Sagan's reactions to this show that he comes across differently. "I don't want to be the second Eddy Merckx, I want to be the first Peter Sagan."

Basso also believed the Slovakian youngster could win the Tour de France, but Sagan was never to succeed. Not even close, but that was never his goal. Instead, he began hoarding green jerseys at the Tour from 2012 onwards. He won seven in total, replacing Erik Zabel as the record holder. Until 2019, he won the points classification every time he reached Paris.

Showman Sagan delivers on the bike and as an entertainer

He also achieved twelve stage wins in the most important race in the world. And time and time again, Sagan cheered in various poses or, as in other races, with special interludes. It may have seemed provocative and perhaps even arrogant to some when Sagan demonstrated his incredible bike control on the finishing straight with a wheelie, which became one of his trademarks. Just like in his first major classics victory at Gent-Wevelgem in 2013, when he also swung an imaginary lasso.

Even as a junior, Sagan cheered extravagantly. As a child, he himself was very impressed when riders presented something extraordinary, Sagan once explained. That's why he also wanted to give the fans something special. And so he not only cheered at one of his first Tour victories as the "Running Man" in memory of a scene from the classic film Forrest Gump. He later slipped into the role of Tom Hanks himself and imitated the chocolate scene.

Sagan has demonstrated tremendous entertainer qualities over the years. He combined them with his qualities as a technically skilled professional and rode his racing bike over the windscreen of a team car directly into the car's wheel mount. He also provided a further sample of his acting talent and impressed as John Travolta's double in a scene from the music film Grease.

Peter Sagan is partly responsible for the revitalisation of cycling

Sagan inspires both on and off the bike, giving his entire sport a new lustre after the difficult years of the noughties, when doping headlines plunged cycling deep into crisis. Now that he has also grown his hair long, the rock star image is pre-programmed.

However, like many in this industry, Sagan occasionally goes overboard. In his younger years, he grabbed a hostess' bum on the podium of the Tour of Flanders in 2013. The then still young Slovakian just seemed to find it funny, but his mistake was interpreted as pure sexism. He apologised and never made such a mistake again.

Ten years later, shortly before his last Tour de France, it was alcohol. Sagan received a three-month suspended sentence and driving licence disqualification after the police in his adopted home of Monaco caught him on his scooter in May with a blood alcohol level of 2.9.

Corona knocks Sagan off his stride

And then there was corona. Sagan was infected with Covid at least three times. And he also came into conflict with the law because of it. When he and his brother, like team-mate Juraj, broke the curfew in Monaco one night in April 2021, the police intervened. Peter Sagan, an anti-vaccination activist who was drunk at the time, got scared and got violent with one of the officers because he feared he would be confronted with a compulsory vaccination.

After corona, Sagan never really got back on track. His close confidant, Gabriele Uboldi, said in 2021 that his protégé had not lost his hunger for victory. Rather, Corona had changed all of his routines. And what is much more serious: the lack of publicity at the races. Sagan is different to other riders, he feeds off it and draws a lot of energy from it.

>> End of career 2023: Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet also calls it a day

In fact, Sagan is at his best when the fans and the media are literally racing for him during the peak of his career - the question of hen and egg remains unanswered. Either way, Sagan became world road race champion three times in a row between 2015 and 2017, something no rider had ever achieved before. Not even Merckx.

Peter Sagan switches to Bora - and is disqualified from the Tour de France

In the midst of the wave of success, Sagan announces a change of team. In 2017, he moves from Tinkoff, where he had been under contract for two years, to Bora-Hansgrohe of all teams. To the small German team that had just made it into the World Tour. Good contacts between Bora team boss Ralph Denk and Sagan manager Giovanni Lombardi, but above all the foresight of the Italian ex-professional, are said to have made the deal possible.

But before the two-time world champion can take the sixth green jersey for his new team at the Tour de France, he is disqualified. An alleged elbow strike in the sprint on stage 4 against Mark Cavendish, who hit the barriers and crashed, ended the endeavour after Sagan had already won a stage. He departs amidst a huge media scrum. The crudest thing - at the end of the year, the UCI announces that the disqualification was a mistake.

Two months later, Sagan defiantly rode to his third World Championship title in a row. After the practising Catholic was granted an audience with the Pope at the start of 2018 and presented with a world champion jersey and a racing bike in the Vatican's colours, he won Paris-Roubaix, his second Monument after the Tour of Flanders in 2016. He finishes the Tour de France in the summer with three stage wins and a green colour, as if nothing had ever happened.

Peter Sagan's return to mountain biking

In 2019, Sagan is now 30 years old, he will win the last of his seven green jerseys, which today seem like a record for eternity given the seemingly never-ending mass of world-class sprinters moving up into the peloton. After that, the dominance of the Slovakian, who has influenced cycling like few other professionals have, comes to an end.

He will remain at Bora until 2021 before ending his career at TotalEnergies. He is consciously taking the step into the second division. While the sponsor is still endeavouring to squeeze the last bit of prestige out of signing the star, who has become calmer, he already has other goals in mind.

Sagan will ride his last race as a professional road cyclist on 1 October 2023. He will bid farewell to his professional career at the Tour de Vendee, a small race in the home of his French team. But he is not hanging up his bike just yet. Sagan recently announced that he could imagine joining a continental team in Slovakia again. At RRK Group - Pierre Baguette - Benzinol, where his brother Juraj works as sports director after retiring from his career.

It is an excellent opportunity to collect kilometres without the pressure of winning. He needs them for what is probably his last big goal on the bike: he wants to play a good role and have fun again at the 2024 Olympics in Paris on his mountain bike. Just as it was always his intention at the beginning of his career.

Peter Sagan's greatest successes

• 3x world champion in road racing (2015, 2016, 2017)
• Winner of the green jersey at the Tour de France (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019)
• 12x Tour de France stage winner (between 2012 and 2019)
• Paris-Roubaix winner (2018)
• Winner of the Tour of Flanders (2016)
• 3x winner Gent-Wevelgem (2013, 2016, 2018)
• 18x Tour de Suisse stage winner
• 17x stage winner Tour of California
• Winner of the points classification at the Giro d'Italia (2021)
• Winner of the Velo d'Or 2016
• First UCI World Ranking List 2016
• A total of 121 victories as a professional, 69 of them at World Tour level