One of the memorable images from yesterday’s Men’s World Championships road race was seeing many of the riders in the race congratulating Peter Sagan immediately after his win.
It shows the mutual respect that the riders have for each other and also the genuine warmth for Peter Sagan amongst his fellow competitors.
After he crossed the finish line, amongst those who offered their congratulations to Sagan were former World Champion Tom Boonen, his Tinkoff-Saxo trade team-mate Matti Breschel, Matteo Trentin and Vincenzo Nibali of Italy, the Pole Tomasz Marczynski, Ireland’s Sam Bennett and Czech rider Zdenek Stybar.
Afterwards, Boonen said of Sagan: “He is a nice winner, a rider who always races and during his career, he at least once deserves the world title. This year he has mainly had to settle for second places. Now he comes out on top.”
“It is not unusual that he wins here. I’m happy for him. Peter went at the right time, we had not seen him a lot (during the race) and suddenly he was there. He rode away really strongly, he deserved to win.”
“Personally, I would have thought that we would finish at the end with a smaller group, because the big teams lost their grip on the game. It was a difficult race, harder than expected.
