In an interview on Eurosport with Laura Meseguer, Peter Sagan has announced that he will retire from road cycling at the end of the current 2023 season.
The Slovakian genius, three-time world champion and multiple stage winner in Giro, Tour and Vuelta, will not completely abandon professional cycling until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where he will take part in the MTB (mountain bike) event to retire "where it all started".
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Born in Zilina just 33 years ago (yesterday was his birthday), he has achieved more than a hundred victories throughout an incredible professional career that began in Liquigas and that has made him become the rider with more green jerseys in the Tour de France
He also is one of the best classics riders ever with 3 world championships, Roubaix and Flanders behind him. We will see what he is able to do in his last season in the elite, he has not yet said his last word.
He said: "Today, on the occasion of my birthday, I decided to share with you some thoughts about my future. The time has come to tell you all because I think you, my fans, deserve to know."
"The time has come to tell you that this year is my last year as a professional on the road. Next year I will stay with the TotalEnergies team and aim to qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in the MTB discipline."
"I will probably do some smaller races as preparation, but definitely not WorldTour races. And after the Olympics, I'll see what happens next. But for sure this year will be my last year in the WorldTour," Sagan continued.
He admits that "it's a decision I made a long time ago. But this decision is not goodbye. I still have some time ahead of me as a cyclist."
Hence 2023 will be his final year as a pro cyclist on the road, but he won't be putting down the bike: "I want to reach my goal (Olympics Paris 2024) and Paris is a special place for me in terms of the Tour de France and the profits of the green jerseys. Paris and the Olympics in France is also important for my sponsor TotalEnergies."
"I don't see this decision and this announcement as goodbye, so I don't want to take this time to say thank you. Of course, I am grateful to my group, which has always stood by me, such as Gabriele Uboldi, Giovanni Lombardi, Maroš Hlad, Gonchar, Ján Valach, Daniel Oss and Maciej Bodnar. Also thanks to sponsors Specialized, Sportful and 100%. So I thank them very much for everything so far and I hope that they will stay with me at least until Paris 2024," he concluded.
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