Peter Sagan cycles for fun but is serious about the world around

World champion is a late bloomer but that has not stopped him from worrying about bad social habits of the new generation.

Despite a hectic past week, Peter Sagan is a serious contender for the first Abu Dhabi Tour title. Delores Johnson / The National

ABU DHABI // Peter Sagan is a delight. He also happens to be a cyclist, and a world champion cyclist at that, but foremost he is a delight. Here is why.

He won the UCI World Championships in Richmond at the end of September and upon winning it said: “I was finding motivation in the world. I think it is big problem with Europe and all this stuff that is happening. I want to just say this was very big motivation for me.”

He did not specifically refer to the Syrian refugee crisis but most people inferred that he was talking about it.

That was an unusual victor’s speech – which athlete, after all, even bothers to pretend that there is a real world outside that small one he exists in?

Now the thing is the Syrian refugee crisis is not what he was really talking about.

Nope, he was drawing a bigger, less immediate picture, as he said ahead of the Abu Dhabi Tour. His angst was a post-millennial one and it is worth reproducing in full.

“I was speaking about the general problem in the world, about how we have to think about our future,” he said. “Because I think, from all that I see, we jump another level but we have forgotten living in this moment. Technology and things are going too fast.”

It is unusual for an athlete to think, let alone talk, about these things I said.

“It’s not strange, but when it’s enough you can see no? The children don’t play outside anymore, the children are not speaking together, just on the phone.

“I don’t know, lots of things are different than before. People stop meeting together because the phone is there now. It’s a new generation we cannot speak, all day only on phone. Facebook, exactly same.

“This media is… the broken life… in this world, lots of family broke, we don’t stick together like people. The people maybe stop helping each other. So lots of things, not just about the current problems.”

This guy? This guy is an athlete, let alone a world champion? Clone him immediately.

ALSO READ:

The thing is, last year – or even as recently as just before Richmond – had he said this, it could easily have passed everyone by. Having burst on to the scene in 2010 with two stage wins in the Paris-Nice race, Sagan was for years the coming man.

A stage win at the Three Days of De Panne in 2013 compelled Mark Cavendish to say, “He’s a once-in-a-generation rider, for sure. He is super, super good. He’s making us all look like juniors, I think.”

And yet, though he has done well enough, it never seemed to do enough justice to the kind of talent he was said to be.

He acquired a reputation in some circles as a nearly man, even if that is harsh on a string of second-places finishes and a four-time winner of the Tour de France’s Green Jersey.

This year, in particular, cycling fretted about his form; he was in slight danger of becoming a personality rather than a rider, so that though he was never forgotten, some of the sparkle had gone. A big-money move to Tinkoff-Saxo last winter (reportedly worth US$4.5million (Dh16.5m) a year) did not start well.

So poor were his results thought to be this spring that the owner Oleg Tinkov publicly lamented that he had paid too much to sign Sagan. He also told a newspaper “if I find some legal way, I want to reduce his pay”.

If any of this worried Sagan he was not letting on – and he does carry a general look of studied unconcern.

But his defence was another indication that he is not your average, say-nothing athlete.

“No [I did not feel pressure], because, first thing I am riding for myself. When I start riding when I was nine years old, I was riding for fun and not for business.

“This is I think more important now, riding for fun, riding for myself, and also for teammates. Not because somebody is on you and wanting something from you. Ok, when you are paying for that, you are paid also because you did something.”

The world title and resulting rainbow jersey has changed the perspective. He has now arrived. Even with Cavendish around (but not racing in Abu Dhabi) Sagan is the main man.

The last week has been “crazy”. Immediately after the win he flew home to Slovakia to celebrate. He then flew to Italy for a Giro d’Italia presentation and then flew in to Abu Dhabi.

He has not changed though, not yet. “Have I realised I am world champion? Oh yeah, because I did a lot of events and a lot of people were calling my manager. After that I understood it’s a big thing.”​

Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE