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 did you eat, Peter? What color was your shit, Peter?”
Right in the middle of trying to come to terms with this new and intrusive way of working, the shit really hit the fan at Tinkoff. It was clear that there was a bit of a power struggle going on between Bjarne and Oleg for control of the team. I didn’t really know either of them or anybody at the team, so I didn’t know whether it was normal or not, though some of the older hands were convinced it had grown worse since Bjarne had sold the whole operation to Oleg. Later, Bjarne would claim that Oleg was jealous of his close relationship with the riders and staff, while Oleg thought that Bjarne saw him as nothing more than a cash provider, funding everything Bjarne wanted and getting treated like a mug in return. As usual in things like this, the truth was somewhere in the middle. They were certainly completely different characters: Bjarne considered every word before delivering it and thought laughing an unnecessary expense of energy. Oleg had no filter between brain and mouth, and every thought he had ended up in the wide world, no matter how offensive or outrageous. People probably think I’m more like Oleg, but in truth I am very uncomfortable with rudeness, either in myself or other people. My dad never let me get away with it when I was a kid, and it stuck. Beyond my public persona as a “crazy character,” I always try to be polite.
We were at Tirreno–Adriatico in March 2015. Oleg wanted us to be pushing every day. We had Alberto Contador as leader, and Oleg wanted us to be challenging Nairo Quintana for leadership of the race at every moment, while Bjarne was all for taking a more cautious approach so early in the season. He gestured to the points jersey that I was wearing and the couple of stages I had won, but basically ignored Oleg. And there is nothing Oleg hates more than being ignored. After one stage, Oleg came to the team hotel in the evening to exert his authority. He was furious to discover that Bjarne had gone out for dinner with friends elsewhere. After kicking lumps out of furniture for a couple of hours, he finally confronted Bjarne, completely oblivious, when he showed up outside the team bus. They had a raging argument right then and there in front of everyone. There were other teams, race officials, and journalists present, you name it.
After the race, I was feeling OK. A bit fatigued, but I figured all this hard work so early in the season was good preparation for the classics. As ever, the first of these would be Milan–San Remo—La Classicissma, La Primavera, and a race I thought I could win—in just a few days, so instead of going back to Monte Carlo, my girlfriend, Katarina, and I went to stay with Bjarne and his family at his place in Switzerland. I was still tired all the time, but it was a great handful of days: riding on hard, clean surfaces, not much traffic, calm guidance from Bjarne, and lovely food at his house in the evening. Plus, because I was with Bjarne, I didn’t have to speak to Bobby every two minutes: “What does your piss smell like today, Peter? Can you count the hairs on your big toe for me, Peter?”
On the Friday morning after a beautiful dinner the night before, we said our good-byes and arranged to meet in Milan the following day.
Saturday arrived, but Bjarne didn’t.