“My World,” Peter Sagan

As energetic and fun-loving as Peter Sagan is and with a creed of “Live every day,” it is a wonder he would take the time to sit down and write a memoir in the prime of his career at the age of 28. He, of course, didn’t.  Though Sagan may masquerade as the author of the book, there is no disguising that is was written by another and that person is British cycling journalist John Deering, who also ghost wrote Sean Yate’s superlative memoir “Its All About the Bike.” Deering tries to write it in Sagan’s voice, and he largely succeeds, but it is interjected with Englishisms hardly a part of Sagan’s Slovakian vernacular, including the four b’s—bloke, bloody, bollocks and bugger. 

The book breezes along as if it’s one long conversation with asides such as, “Motorycles.  Don’t get me started.  I’m in a good mood.  Maybe I’ll come back to them when I’m in a foul one.”  He was talking about the Ventoux stage of the 2016 Tour de France when thick crowds forced a motorcycle to halt causing Chis Froome to crash and sprint the final meters to the finish without his bike. But Sagan fails to return to the subject of motorcycles..  Another time he says, “Somebody told me the other day that Belgium produces so much manure that it is the only country in the world that has to export it.  Is that true?  Hell, I don’t know.  I’m a cyclist, not an agro-economist.”  A quick google search would reveal it is not the only country to export manure, but the editors of the book let it stand, just as they do his comment that while in Brazil for the 2016 Olympics he watched the sun set on the Atlantic, the ocean it actually rises from there.

Though the book has the tone of being quickly dashed off without too much reflection or perspective, it does recount with some detail his biggest wins—the three consecutive World Championships from 2015 to 2017  (a feat no one else has accomplished), his Flanders and Paris-Roubaix wins and a few of his Tour stages victories. He resorts to YouTube on occasion to refresh his memory. 

He also goes into depth on the fourth stage of the 2017 Tour when he elbowed Mark Cavendish in the sprint causing him to crash and break his shoulder, for which he was banned from The Race, despite being its star attraction. He cites the discovery of a camera angle shot from behind them that shows Cavendish coming up from behind and hitting his right forearm with his left hand brake lever causing his elbow to jut out and knock Cavendish down, vindicating him.  Unfortunately it didn’t emerge until much later.  While The Race continued without him, Sagan quickly arranged the rental of Aristotle Onassis’ premier cruise ship, , “the most perfect floating palace” he called it, for a week and partied with 28 of his best friends.  He doesn’t go into much detail on his week at sea other than that he took a tumble and knocked out some teeth.

He was distraught that so much was made of the incident and the accusations that he purposely elbowed Cavendish, who he respects and considers a friend.  In a rare instance of profanity, he says, “For fucks sake, let it go.  It’s racing.”  He harbors no grudges and hardly has a critical word for anyone throughout the book other than Bobby Julich, who was his coach when he was riding for Bjarne Riis and Oleg Tinkov.  He blames Julich for over training him and being excessively meddlesome, undermining his success,  accusing him of “destroying” him with his “persistent interventions,” even wanting to know the color of his shit.  It was a relief when he spent a few days with his director Riis at his home in Switzerland and didn’t have to speak to Julich every two minutes. Team owner Tinkov and Sagan didn’t always get along, but Sagan appreciated his flamboyant personality, especially in contrast to the ultra serious Riis, who considered laugher an unnecessary expenditure of energy. Sagan is very sorry that Tinkov has left the sport and hopes he will return.

Sagan remains so positive and upbeat through the book he makes little mention of the pain and suffering that is a common theme of most cycling memoirs—how riders deal with the extreme effort required of them and how they come to savor the daily dose of suffering they must endure, whether training or racing.  He just makes an off-handed reference here and there.  As he neared the finish at his first World Chamionship win in Richmond, Virginia he admits his “calves were screaming at me with all the accumulated pain of 260 kilometers,” but leaves it at that.  Before his Flanders win, when he drops Michal Kwiatkowski he “senses he is going through the pain I had suffered three years previously.”  He accepts it as part of the sport and doesn’t go on and on attempting to wax poetic as so many do.

Since he was a dominant rider from his introduction to the sport, he doesn’t overly exalt in his triumphs. His favorite recurring expression throughout the book is that there are a hundred stories in every race and his is just one of them.  There is not a single mention of tears brought on by a great victory nor tears from a devastating loss.  His only acknowledgement of tears is hypothetical, saying the reaction of his Tinkov teammates to the mid-season firing of Riis by Tinkov was a cross of old women wailing, wringing their hands at a funeral and kids frolicking in a play ground.  

He gives glimpses of his fun-loving nature saying “something you may not know about me is that I have a thing for fire extinguishers.”  After his wedding when he moved into his freshly built house he celebrated by spraying it with a fire extinguisher.  It took a gang of professional cleaners three visits to rid the house of the mess.  He mentions another time in a hotel lobby when he was having a disagreement with someone it suddenly came to a halt when he made a move for an extinguisher.

Another of his favorite pastimes is when dining out with his cronies having everyone guess what the bill will be with the person furthest off having to pay it.  He’s always happy when his older brother Juray, who is a teammate, is part of the crowd, as he’s not very adept at the game.  He’s older by a year and when they were growing up he was the racing fanatic, wanting to watch it on television, while Peter wanted to romp about on his bike.  He’s a strong enough cyclist to have won the Slovakian national championship, as has Peter.

The book is dedicated to his son Marlon, but he is not included in the sixteen pages of glossy photos, nor is his wife nor their flamboyant semi-royal wedding nor their celebrated “Grease” routine, both of which are available on YouTube.  Before their marriage two months after becoming world champion he credits her with giving him reserves of strength he didn’t know he had.  She shared his exuberance for life and was an ambitious business woman.  But after their wedding she receives just two brief mentions, one of merely that it was nice to have a mid-season break with her and to be able to put his “feet up” (a cycling term for rest) at their home in Monaco.  But there is no mention of their divorce, which was announced at The Tour last year, as the book was in its final edit, with her being pretty much edited out of the book.

Nor is there mention of his pinching the derrière of a podium girl at the 2013 Tour of Flanders while she is kissing the winner Fabian Cancellera, another incident that brought him much unwanted attention.  He could have easily used it as an example of his joie de vivre and playful nature and that he meant no harm and was just playing to the crowd, as it was in plain view of everyone.  It too is there on YouTube.  But he chooses to ignore it.

Sagan is establishing himself as one of the all-time greats of cycling.  He shares the record with Eric Zabel of six wins of The Tour’s Green Jersey.  He’d already have his seventh if he hadn’t been so unceremoniously kicked out of  the 2017 Tour.  No one doubts he will claim the record for himself and will most likely pad it to an insurmountable total.  He could continue to be a dominant force for years.  There will be many more biographies of him in the years to come. This early “autobiography” will be a minor footnote, but for now it provides a glimpse into the man.