Peter Sagan

Peter Sagan officially ended his 16-year professional cycling career in 2024. He was a showman on and off the race course, and even took a curtain call on retirement. While he made headlines on the road most often, the Slovakian champion demonstrated his versatility on any surface in his career, competing at World Championships in mountain biking, gravel and e-MTB.

He claimed 121 career victories, including three successive World Championships from 2015 to 2017, 12 Tour de France stage wins, a record seven Tour green jerseys plus victories at Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders and three times at Gent-Wevelgem. 

In 2023 the accomplished Slokavian announced his retirement from the road and turned his attention to qualifying in mountain biking for the Paris Olympic Games. However, in February 2024 he was hospitalised for abnormal heart rhythms while riding in Spain and had a cardiac recording device implanted. He then signed with Specialized Factory Racing to race MTB, but just days later had a second cardiac surgery. 

Even though he rebounded weeks later, Sagan failed to qualify for the Olympic Games. He returned to the road that summer with Pierre Baguette Cycling,  a Continental team where Sagan’s brother Juraj was the sports director, and this allowed him to ride Tour de Hongrie and bow out to a home crowd at the Tour de Slovakia in June.

Early Years

Sagan born and raised in Žilina, Slovakia, where he and his brother, Juraj, who is eight years older, began racing mountain and cyclocross bikes as young children. Peter won his first World title in the junior cross-country mountain bike race in 2008. The two raced together on the same teams for 13 years, until Juraj retired at the end of the 2022 season having moved to TotalEnergies with Peter the year before.

The younger Sagan has been a dominant force in sprints on the road since he joined the WorldTour in 2010 as a 20-year-old with Liquigas, racking up top results from the one-day Classics to Grand Tours. In his first appearance at Paris-Nice, Sagan took two stage wins and the points jersey and then claimed the points and best young rider awards at the Tour of California, which sealed his Hollywood-style as a fan favourite. Besides animating races, his reputation to animate interviews and social media also grew with his broad smile, humorous quips and outspoken opinions.

Rise to the top

Between 2011 and 2019 Sagan’s name was synonymous with sprint success, earning a record seven points classification titles at the Tour de France, along with 12 stage victories during that time. Sagan's record was interrupted in 2017 when he bumped elbows with Mark Cavendish during the sprint on stage 4 in Vittel. Cavendish crashed and the jury ejected Sagan from the race for sparking the incident. Sagan stamped his authority at the UCI Road World Championships and became the only male cyclist ever to earn three consecutive rainbow-striped jerseys, doing so in 2015, 2016 and 2017. 

He has four stage wins from the Vuelta a España and two at the Giro d’Italia, taking both of those in 2021 along with the points classification. He also put his name in the record books as the winningest individual from the Tour of California, amassing 17 stage wins. With a stage win in 2022 at the Tour de Suisse, Sagan bumped his total victories in that stage race to 18. In the Spring Classics, he has been most prolific at Gent-Wevelgem, winning three times between 2013-2018. During that time he also won the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and GP de Québec twice.

The COVID-19 pandemic, a knee injury, and a move from Bora-Hansgrohe to TotalEnergies saw Sagan's star descend, and a stage win and points classification in the 2021 Giro d'Italia was his last major success. Knee surgery knocked Sagan out of the Tokyo Olympic Games, which were postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.

Sagan announced his first retirement in 2023, and then health issues caused him to put down the bike, MTB and road, in 2024.

Key Results

🥇  Tour de France Points classification 2012-2019

🥇  Tour de France stages, 12 total between 2012-2019

🥇  Vuelta a España stages, 3 total in 2011; stage 3 in 2015

🥇  Giro d’Italia Points classification 2021

🥇  Giro d’Italia stages, 2 total in 2021

🥇  overall Tour of California 2015

🥇  Tour of California stages, 17 total between 2010-2019

🥇  National Road Race Championships 2011-2015, 2018, 2021, 2022

🥇  UEC Road European Champion 2016

🥇  Gent–Wevelgem 2013, 2016, 2018

🥇  Paris-Roubaix 2018

🥇  Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne 2017

🥇  Tour of Flanders 2016

🥇  E3 Harelbeke 2014

🥇  Brabantse Pijl 2013

🥈 Milan – San Remo 2013, 2017
🥈 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2016-2017
🥈 Strade Bianche 2013-2014