Peter doesn’t listen to the critics
The three-time world champ was part of a fairly large bunch at the end of Ghent-Wevelgem. But an early move of his surprised them all. A number of world-class sprinters were not able to keep up, and Peter managed to stay in the lead till the finish line. Visibly upset Elia Viviani finished second and Arnaud Démare took third place.
“I don’t watch these critics or read the newspapers. Why should I read it? If you are good, you are good. If you are bad, you always have critics. It’s my life, it’s not the journalists’ life,” Sagan responded to journalists questioning his fitness after the E3 Harelbeke.
“I went to Harelbeke, like not 100 per cent. I was concentrated, yes, but if you don’t feel good, what can you do? It’s about your legs, not just about your head. A lot of times it happened to me in Harelbeke I was bad and in Ghent I was good.”
Ghent-Wevelgem does indeed seem to be Sagan’s favourite. It was his first big one-day race win in 2013 and he won it again in 2016. With this year’s victory, Sagan joins the likes of Eddy Merckx, Mario Cipollini and Tom Boonen.
Ghent-Wevelgem 2018 (251.1km)
1 Peter Sagan (Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe, in 5-07-32
2 Elia Viviani (Ita) Quick-Step Floors
3 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ
4 Christophe Laporte (Fra) Cofidis
5 Jens Debusschere (Bel) Lotto-Soudal
6 Oliver Naesen (Bel) Ag2r La Mondiale
7 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Mitchelton-Scott
8 Zdeněk Štybar (Cze) Quick-Step Floors
9 Jasper Stuyven (Bel) Trek-Segafredo
10 Wout Van Aert (Bel) Veranda’s Willems Crelan
Marco Haller left with carbon-fibre fragments
That crash did have some painful consequences.
Kulhavy and Grotts win Cape Epic
7 days, 658 kilometres, 13 500 metres in elevation. Jaroslav Kulhavy and Howard Grotts won one of the toughest MTB races in the world by a margin of almost 10 minutes, making it the third victory in Kulhavy’s career.
“The 8 days were unbelievably demanding, but we’re really happy we won despite the problems we had in the beginning of the race. It’s great we did it even though Howie is basically a novice in this kind of circumstances,” Kulhavy said after the race.
