involved in cycling administration well before he stopped riding. He could see that there was little vision involved in Slovakian cycling, and what organization there was resembled a village party. Internationally, we were a joke, with Juraj and I and the others like us relying on the dedication of our parents to pull things together and to drive us to races all over central Europe. My contemporary Michal Kwiato remembers getting to junior races in, say, Croatia with the Polish squad and their matching bikes and kits, and so forth, then I’d be getting out of the back seat of my dad’s car with my bike wheels tucked under my feet and my cycling shoes wedged under the passenger seat.
Ján was determined to put a stop to that and demanded that the money received by the federation went into the grassroots of the sport. You can imagine that the suits holding the purse strings weren’t so keen on diverting funds away from their own little clubs and races. There were other scandals too—the national velodrome was sold off to a developer on the understanding that the cash would go into a new state-of-the-art facility. Needless to say, we’re still waiting. In the end, a man can only bang his head against a brick wall so many times, and Ján withdrew from the sharp end and put all his energy into being the DS for the national squad, but that is the role where he has been able to have the most impact on my career, even if his vision for Slovakian cycling continues to gather dust.
The thing I am most proud of here is the Peter Sagan Academy. I set it up after talking with Ján and hearing about how the national cycling program ought to be improved and how he met resistance at every turn.
Three years ago, I took on the junior cycling team that I’d grown up with to say thank you and to try to give a chance to other kids coming through. We rebranded it the Peter Sagan Academy to give it a bit of weight, and I invested some money in it. With my name on the academy, it was easier for them to bring in some other sponsors, too. The national federation was still expecting parents to pay for their kids to race or drive their kids across Europe themselves. These days, thanks to crucial sponsorship from Robert Spinazzè, CEO of the Spinazzè Group (they make the concrete poles and structures used to protect orchards and vineyards), we’re able to run a program to take boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 18 to the same races that the German, Italian, and Polish national structures are targeting. Robert is passionate about the sport, and his involvement is essential as we continue our quest for future champions. Sportful, the clothing manufacturer, has joined us to supply all the clothing for the academy and the team, and without their support, our ambitions would be impeded. We’ve added an Under-23 layer now, too, so that we can continue their development further and keep the teams together. The ultimate aim is to have many more Slovakian riders in the professional peloton and maybe one day a ProTour team based in Slovakia. We are now supporting 85 riders at the academy, and I believe it will stand on its own soon when the top teams start benefiting from the talent it is beginning to supply. There is no pressing need for the big cycling teams to invest in youth in the same way that football clubs across Europe do. Those are short-lived commercial enterprises with short-term goals. A grassroots program like this could make a real difference. Any number of factors can take promising kids away from the game: the need to earn money or study for better-paying careers, or other sports with better investment creaming off the talent.
Then there’s the Peter Sagan Kids Tour, which has been running in earnest since 2014. Now these are awesome events, and every time I’m able to attend, I have an absolute blast. The Tour is run by my first-ever coach, Peter Zánický. When I was just 9 years old, Peter used to drive Juraj and me to events all over the country, and it is so reassuring to know that my old coach now has nearly five thousand enthusiastic children turning up to compete and have a fun day out. These days the Kids Tour consists of nine events from March to September, each taking place in a beautiful Slovak town. It’s so heartwarming to see kids as young as toddlers scooting along on their balance bikes at an organized occasion like this. There’s a competitive element to every event, but the main focus is on creating a family-friendly day out with the emphasis on having fun! So far, thousands of kids have taken part, and, while I’m positive there are a number of future stars among them, it’s the smiles on their faces that make the whole enterprise particularly gratifying.
I’d like to think that any Slovak youngster looking to take up cycling as a career would have an easier time of it than we did. And who knows, perhaps one day I’ll be the guy in the car urging on the next Slovak world champion. History has this funny way of repeating itself.
2015
Oleg Tinkov is a funny bastard in so many ways. Funny in that he’s always playing the fool, or telling stories, or goofing around. Funny because he just can’t stop himself from saying the things that really shouldn’t be said. But also funny in that he’s just not wired up like other people.
It wasn’t Oleg Tinkov who brought me to the Tinkoff team, like you might think. The prime mover behind my decision to change teams for the first time in my career was Bjarne Riis.
Riis had been running a cycling team pretty much since the day he’d retired. He won the Tour de France in 1996, then rode alongside Jan Ullrich as his younger teammate took the victory the following year. Soon afterward he was instrumental in setting up the Danish team that would go on to become CSC and then Saxo Bank, winning most things that could be won at some point during the team’s existence. He had a reputation for getting the best out of riders who might have otherwise ridden out less stellar careers or even disappeared altogether. He sounded like a great fit for me. After bringing Tinkov in originally as a sponsor, he’d recently sold the team organization itself to the Russian oligarch, but he was continuing to work for the team as the head honcho on a three-year contract.
Giovanni had been fielding calls from BMC, Sky, Quick-Step, and the racing driver Fernando Alonso, who was apparently putting together a top-level team, all of whom were interested in taking Team Peter on board for 2015. In the end, though, through all the talk and noise, only Tinkoff was prepared to negotiate to a positive result. With the good feeling I was getting from Riis and the decisive actions of his team, it was the only choice to make. Giovanni had seen out his riding career under Riis and had been a teammate of his a few years before that, and he hadn’t a bad word to say about the Dane. Serious, trustworthy, engaged, and knowledgeable. New team, new people, new system, new bikes . . . new motivation.
Giovanni worked hard to ensure that the whole of Team Peter would be absorbed into the Tinkoff organization. That was easier said than done. There were riders and soigneurs who had been there for years who would have to be placated if all the various arms of Team Peter were to be accommodated. In the end, Juraj and Maroš came with me.
Suddenly we were part of a bigger setup, with a more professional approach, and with the bigger expectations and pressures that involves.
The UCI had been implementing stricter rules on coaches in an effort to make sure that riders’ health was being correctly protected and any possible fluctuations in performance due to doping would be more likely to be flushed out. To be honest, one of the things that had been grinding me down at Cannondale was having to report to a guy every day with all my numbers: training figures, heart rates, power output, calories taken, number of breaths, how many pisses . . . It was doing my head in, but I knew it had to be done, and I put myself at the mercy of my new team. Bjarne Riis hooked me up with Bobby Julich, a rider who had hit great heights with him at CSC and was now a well-respected coach.
I talked with Bobby every day. “How do you feel, Peter? What did you do today, Peter? What was your resting rate, Peter? What was your training rate, Peter? How did you sleep, Peter? What
