Is Peter Sagan too good for his own good?

The dynamics of bicycle road racing is most of the time so confusing to the uninitiated. For example, most people think that the cyclist leading the pack during the early part of the race is the best rider and a potential winner. They obviously haven’t heard of drafting.

Drafting is as old as life. Geese looking for warmer climates fly in V- formation to take advantage of the protection from the headwind from the birds ahead of them. That’s drafting. In other words, the cyclist at the front of the peloton until the last 90 minutes of a race is not the best rider, but is called as the domestique, or a team helper.

As a team helper, this rider helps in getting water from the team car to the leaders, to get the jackets and to break the wind. A domestique is not supposed to win races, he only mission is to keep his team leader safe and sound until the last 200 meters or just before the last climb. That’s why you never see the face of sprinter Mark Cavendish or Marcel Kittel into the wind until the last 10 seconds of the race.

Now what has this short soliloquy got to do with Peter Sagan?

Last week, in the classic Gent-Wevelghem, Sagan found himself in a breakaway with four other companions in the closing kilometers of the race. The gap against the chasers was very small, so the quintet needed to keep working together maintaining a paceline (Remember the V-shape formation of the geese?), to set up a high speed to prevent the chasers from catching up. One rider stays at the front for 2 seconds before moving back to the end of the line. The next follows.

When you’re not as good as a sprinter as Sagan, you try to go to the front as less as the strongest rider. This mean that during the sprint, Sagan will be tired or you can attack him from behind.

Nikki Terpstra, a rider from a rival team, QUICKSTEP, did just that. He stopped working. Sagan called Terpstra’s bluff and also stopped working. So  did the third rider. As the trio hesitated, this allowed duo of Greg Van Avermaet and Jens Keukeleire to take the top two spots leaving  Sagan with lots of, “what ifs.”?

The other thing with Sagan is his MIA teammates- they are nowhere to be seen when the real racing starts. So, nobody takes care of Sagan in the closing kilometers of there ace, unlike a Terpstra or a Van Avermaet.

So, two things can happen to a strong rider. 1- Majority of the team salary goes  to the star rider (Sagan) leaving the star with poor quality domestique rider hires. 2- Everybody will be racing against you and want you to waste your energy chasing down a breakaway.

So, unless Sagan place it very, very smart or plays possum, then he might win tonight's (last night) Tour of Flanders. He knows that its not always  the strongest rider that wins, but the smartest or the luckiest.

Thats the conundrum of Pater Sagan today.