{"id":582833,"date":"2026-04-03T12:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582833\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T12:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:10:10","slug":"sagan-says-pogacar-is-so-good-hes-making-cycling-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582833\/","title":{"rendered":"Sagan Says Poga\u010dar Is So Good He\u2019s Making Cycling Boring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published April 3, 2026 05:58AM<\/p>\n

Peter Sagan<\/a> is tipping his cap in awe to Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a>, whom he admits has already surpassed even his own golden era with a dominance bordering on routine.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar \u2014 chasing a third Tour of Flanders<\/a> crown on Sunday \u2014 is operating on a different plane, Sagan admitted in a pair of interviews this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he does is inexplicable. He is the god of cycling,\u201d Sagan told El Pa\u00eds<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s unique. He\u2019s one step above me and the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sagan also said Poga\u010dar is dominating in ways that are changing the sport, and perhaps\u00a0not always for the best.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should only let him race in a separate category. The WorldTour is too small for him,\u201d Sagan told Het Nieuwsblad. \u201cAs a result, he also makes cycling boring in a certain way. You can\u2019t say it any other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

After watching Poga\u010dar win Milan-San Remo, Sagan said the Slovenian is a league of his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is only one reason why Milan-San Remo was interesting this year: he crashed, and we suddenly got a nice fight,\u201d Sagan told the Belgian daily.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven I never thought he would attack the Cipressa after his crash. But Poga\u010dar is so crazy that he even does that,\u201d Sagan said. \u201cThey sometimes say that racing is not PlayStation, but for him it is. Even easier than PlayStation. As beautiful as it was to watch Milan-San Remo, it\u2019s so boring on other days.\u201d<\/p>\n

10 years after
\n\"Cycling:Sagan won Flanders ahead of Cancellara in 2016 at the height of his powers. (Photo: Tim De Waele\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Not that he is criticizing Poga\u010dar, it\u2019s just that Sagan is saying out loud what some are already thinking.<\/p>\n

More than a decade ago, Sagan was the peloton\u2019s wunderkind who brought a fresh rock \u2019n\u2019 roll attitude to racing.<\/p>\n

Coming of age just as social media was reshaping storytelling, Sagan was the first major star in the meme age. From Forest Gump to The Hulk, Sagan\u2019s finish line antics and explosive racing helped usher in a new era.<\/p>\n

Sagan is far from the rolling circus that he dominated in many ways the same way Poga\u010dar is today, and said he doesn\u2019t miss the pressure that came with being at the top.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone looks at him as the god of cycling, and in a way he is, but he has to know how to deal with that,\u201d Sagan told El Pa\u00eds. \u201cA god cannot damage his image with any foolishness.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week marks 10 years since Sagan\u2019s victory at the Tour of Flanders, when he delivered the first of two monuments of his career. He also won Paris-Roubaix, the lone monument that\u2019s on Poga\u010dar\u2019s career to-do list.<\/p>\n

Sagan would often light up racing much in the way Poga\u010dar is now, but his career was waning just as cycling\u2019s modern obsession with data, aerodynamics, and nutrition was taking hold.<\/p>\n

Sagan left with 121 career victories and three consecutive world titles, a record that Poga\u010dar could equal at this year\u2019s world championships in Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a good victory\u201d, Sagan said in an interview with Het Nieuwsblad<\/a>. \u201cIt was the 100th Tour of Flanders, wasn\u2019t it? And I won in the rainbow jersey. But what I liked the most was who came second, Fabian Cancellara.<\/p>\n

\u201cI so often finished second or third behind him. Finally, I could beat that old guy. That made that Ronde especially special for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I didn\u2019t like to suffer\u2019
\n\"TadejPoga\u010dar knocked off Milan-San Remo last month to win a race Sagan never won. (Photo by Marco Bertorello \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

Now 36, he is staying busy in retirement. After surgery ended his Olympic mountain bike ambitions in 2024, Sagan says he\u2019s embraced life as a full-time dad.<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade beyond his glory years, he\u2019s staying visible with sponsor and media appearances, including a stint on Slovakia\u2019s Let\u2019s Dance.<\/p>\n

Sagan, who was the generational icon of his day, often drew the same comparisons to Eddy Merckx and cycling\u2019s greats that Poga\u010dar is today.<\/p>\n

Retired since 2023, Sagan admits that Poga\u010dar is taking cycling into a new orbit even as he defended his own style of racing when he won Flanders in the rainbow jersey in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cTimes have changed,\u201d he said. \u201cI was much smarter. I liked to win, but I didn\u2019t like to suffer. If I could choose between an attack from far away or staying in the peloton for another 50km and then attack, I chose the latter.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe Eddy Merckx did something similar in his day, but cycling was very different then. I don\u2019t think you can compare,\u201d Sagan said. \u201cThe reality is that when Tadej was born, the planets aligned. What he does is beyond words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sagan and Poga\u010dar overlapped in their respective careers, but by 2020, Sagan\u2019s star was fading while the Slovenian was blowing up the script of what modern cycling can look like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published April 3, 2026 05:58AM Peter Sagan is tipping his cap in awe to Tadej Poga\u010dar, whom he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,68224,85,172608,120327,68380,203632,75494,67883],"class_list":{"0":"post-582833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-parent_category-road","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tag-paris-roubaix","14":"tag-tag-peter-sagan","15":"tag-tag-tadej-pogacar","16":"tag-tag-tour-of-flanders","17":"tag-tag-uci-road-world-championships","18":"tag-type-article"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}