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Cav is my favourite rider of all time - but I wouldn’t compare him to Sagan when it comes to getting over climbs. Cav needs 3 guys to get him over a mountain, Sagan attacks off the front on the same climb.

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I am not surprised but am sad to see my favorite cyclist retire.

Why do you think they're so successful?

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This feels like Haas and Rich energy all over again

I raced road bikes full time as a cat 1 for 10 years. I know plenty about the relationship between PEDs and Cycling.

Someone below commented on how other sports act holier than thou like there isn’t PED use there too.

Doping is part of cycling. It’s also part of track, marathon, boxing, baseball, football, cross country skiing, weight lifting, etc…and the way I feel about it is that if you are a pro athlete and you don’t take PEDs, you must not take the job seriously enough.

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Stake is a garbage company that promotes youth gambling. Sad to see they are so successful.

Nooooooooo

Same, and to think when Sagan emerged in 2010, he was right in Cav’s wheelhouse, as a pure sprinter who could make it over a lumpy course. But by 2012 there was no real competition anymore: Sagan could make it over any climb save the high mountains and would usually make it on to the podium. It’s hard to overstate how versatile the man was. They had to change the green jersey rules at the Tour in order to keep it competitive. He won three consecutive World Championships on totally different terrains. I’d rate him the best overall Classics rider of the 2010s. One of the all time greats, just a step below Merckx IMO.

This headline reads 10X better than your comment. I read your mess three times and still don’t know what you’re saying.

Who?

May go down as the best bike handler in history.

I liked both of them. 🤷‍♂️

Same but my brain associated him with "Carl" Sagan. Very confusing moment.

Hey bro I don’t know if you know anything about professional cycling but doping has been around forever. Just looking at the top 10 finishers of the TDF from 1997-2015 there are only around 30 riders who weren’t banned/tested positive/admitted to/failed tests for doping of some sort. That’s 30 of 180 top ten riders over 18 years in one of the major races.

Maybe you don’t remember a team Festina in 1998. The French police found them in possession of EPO, testosterone, amphetamines, etc. that police investigation kept on going searching more and more teams to the point that the riders themselves boycotted the 17th stage and the UCI had to ask the police to back off. only 11 riders finished the 17th stage.

Only one rider (Fernando Escartin) between 1999 and 2005 that finished on the podium in one of the top three spots has not been busted for doping.

Have you even heard of lance Armstrong or Operation Puerto? Floyd Landis? Contador? Basso? Ulrich?

Professional cycling has always abused performance enhancing drugs.

I suspect that by now cycling is cleaner than many other endurance sports now because of all the scandals and scrutiny that follows. If I remember it right there was that one doctor for Contador who never faced charges. He was also coincidentally the doctor for half the Spanish football team as well

Don’t follow this sport, so headline sux. 1- thought he’d actively stop all road races, 2- 🎯Olympics to stop or disrupt.

Beast! Good luck Sagan!

He could always just do some gravel events after 2024. Seems to be what everyone is doing now.

imagine if they were actually good?

It was wild watching World Champs back in the mid 2010s just knowing Sagan was going to find a way to do it. I think in 2017 in Norway there were some issues with the camera feeds and it blanked out near the end. Went from "there's a group and it's anyone's race" to "and it's Sagan with the three-peat" like when low budget action movies cut out the violence to save special effects budget and maintain a PG-13 rating.

He did have a knack for being able to get in the right place with the right time and it was fun back in the day watching Quickstep set up a big leadout train for Kittel, only for Sagan to ride it too and pop him at the line.

r/boneappletea, i think you mean “End of an era”

Yeah. At one point it becomes near impossible to continue climbing, and the only way left is down. Even if his power numbers were consistent, other teams and riders would actively work against him in the final sprints. To where it was no longer a contest of strength but rather Sagan vs the rest of the entire field. When you become a marked rider like that, it’s fuckin tough to continue climbing. He also made a fuckton of money along the way, so retiring probably ain’t a bad idea at all.

I used to race at a domestic pro level, and I can simply say that strength is only a small component to winning. The rest is “strategy” or math. Imo cycling has just become too predictable. The only fun part to watch is the last 5 min. I don’t endorse drugs, but I will say that watching Armstrong back in the day was just wild.

As for Sagan, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he comes back outa retirement in 5 years or so. By then a lot of people he races with now will have moved on, and they’ll forget who he was and he could have a Cav style comeback.