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On Slovakia

I love Slovakia. There’s something exciting about coming from such a young and proud country, like you’re always doing things for the first time. It’s a crazy way to think, really. Slovak people have been here for the thick end of two thousand years, and we’ve got our own language and our own distinct style of medieval architecture that you’d recognize immediately.

But living memory is a bit different. We spent most of the twentieth century being pulled between the competing might of Germany and the Soviet Union, and more often than not, we were paired up with our Czech neighbors. We were finally parted from them without the need for much more than a handshake and a wave in 1993, a process so without acrimony that it’s popularly known as the Velvet Divorce. We still share a lot of stuff with the Czechs. After all, they make the beer, so there’s absolutely nothing to be gained in falling out with them. Oh, and we’re in the European Union, too. I’m looking forward to one of my British friends effectively explaining to me why leaving it is such a good idea. I’ve been waiting a little while now.

There are about 5 million of us Slovaks, which puts us in the same ballpark as Norway, Finland, and Ireland by population—yes, I can use Google and Wikipedia, thank you—but we’re short on national heroes whether in history, art, or sport, so it’s a very cool thing for us to have a world champion in anything. I do feel a certain mixture of pressure and pride. You can’t avoid it, not when everybody in the street wants to shake your hand or take a selfie with you, and I’m not going to be the miser who denies them. I’d want one. And as there’s only 5 million of us, I’m working my way through everyone who wants one quite systematically. It’s not so much that I’m super famous or anything like that, but more to do with us not having too many famous people, if you see what I mean. We don’t, as a rule, go in for celebrity culture much in Slovakia. It’s not like you get people throwing themselves at your feet or silly stuff like that; we’re all just people getting on with our lives.

Would I be the rider I am today if I hadn’t grown up in Slovakia? That’s a really interesting question. I’m always being asked about my antics on a bike. I mean, the way I ride my bike and do tricks, wheelies, stunts, avoid crashes, that sort of thing. In fact, I’m usually being told, “Peto, no wonder you can do wheelies; it’s because you used to do BMX. Hey Peter, you can park your bike in a roof rack on top of a car because you were a mountain biker.”

These things are true to a certain extent. You need a whole new set of skills to ride mountain bikes and BMX. But I had a lot of those skills before I even started doing those things. In my opinion, the most useful education for being a professional athlete, pretty much any sport, is a childhood spent outdoors, and as a youngster I was given free rein to explore and play in the Slovakian countryside. Other families probably thought I was wild . . . climbing trees, hiking out through the forests, swimming in the lakes and rivers, and building dens and camps in summer. Then in winter we would be skiing, sledding, and organizing the world’s largest snowball fights.

While you think you’re just having fun and being a tearaway, you’re learning crafts and skills. Coordination is probably the most obvious one, but you’re building your strength, finding out what your body can do, discovering your limits, and then trying to reset them to a higher level. You’re training, really, whether you want to be a soccer player, an ice hockey player, or a cyclist. Often, when I’m hurtling down a mountainside or testing my nerves in a fiercely contested bunch sprint, I’m drawing on childhood experiences with my big brothers in the Slovakian countryside.

I’m not Slovakia’s first cycling champion. That accolade belongs to Ján Valach. He was a Slovak guy riding on international teams and competing in big races up until 2010, and he was the only guy we had to look up to when we were coming through the ranks. But more than that, Ján always had the ability to see the bigger picture, which made him the perfect man to drag Slovakian cycling up by its bootstraps and really make something of the national setup. He has been behind the wheel of the car at each of my world championship victories, and now I’m lucky enough to have him with us in the BORA-hansgrohe team, too.

Unfortunately, those perceptive directeur sportif (DS) roles at Richmond, Doha, and Bergen are only part of the story, and the other half is sadly the narrative of my Slovakia as I see it today.

Ján started getting involved in cycling administration well before he stopped riding. He could see that there was little vision involved in Slovakian cycling, and what organization there was resembled a village party. Internationally, we were a joke, with Juraj and I and the others like us relying on the dedication of our parents to pull things together and to drive us to races all over central Europe. My contemporary Michal Kwiato remembers getting to junior races in, say, Croatia with the Polish squad and their matching bikes and kits, and so forth, then I’d be getting out of the back seat of my dad’s car with my bike wheels tucked under my feet and my cycling shoes wedged under the passenger seat.

Ján was determined to put a stop to that and demanded that the money received by the federation went into the grassroots of the sport. You can imagine that the suits holding the purse strings weren’t so keen on diverting funds away from their own little clubs and races. There were other scandals too—the national velodrome was sold off to a developer on the understanding that the cash would go into a new state-of-the-art facility. Needless to say, we’re still waiting. In the end, a man can only bang his head against a brick wall so many times, and Ján withdrew from the sharp end and put all his energy into being the DS for the national squad, but that is the role where he has been able to have the most impact on my career, even if his vision for Slovakian cycling continues to gather dust.

The thing I am most proud of here is the Peter Sagan Academy. I set it up after talking with Ján and hearing about how the national cycling program ought to be improved and how he met resistance at every turn.

Three years ago, I took on the junior cycling team that I’d grown up with to say thank you and to try to give a chance to other kids coming through. We rebranded it the Peter Sagan Academy to give it a bit of weight, and I invested some money in it. With my name on the academy, it was easier for them to bring in some other sponsors, too. The national federation was still expecting parents to pay for their kids to race or drive their kids across Europe themselves. These days, thanks to crucial sponsorship from Robert Spinazzè, CEO of the Spinazzè Group (they make the concrete poles and structures used to protect orchards and vineyards), we’re able to run a program to take boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 18 to the same races that the German, Italian, and Polish national structures are targeting. Robert is passionate about the sport, and his involvement is essential as we continue our quest for future champions. Sportful, the clothing manufacturer, has joined us to supply all the clothing for the academy and the team, and without their support, our ambitions would be impeded. We’ve added an Under-23 layer now, too, so that we can continue their development further and keep the teams together. The ultimate aim is to have many more Slovakian riders in the professional peloton and maybe one day a ProTour team based in Slovakia. We are now supporting 85 riders at the academy, and I believe it will stand on its own soon when the top teams start benefiting from the talent it is beginning to supply. There is no pressing need for the big cycling teams to invest in youth in the same way that football clubs across Europe do. Those are short-lived commercial enterprises with short-term goals. A grassroots program like this could make a real difference. Any number of factors can take promising kids away from the game: the need to earn money or study for better-paying careers, or other sports with better investment creaming off the talent.

Then there’s the Peter Sagan Kids Tour, which has been running in earnest since 2014. Now these are awesome events, and every time I’m able to attend, I have an absolute blast. The Tour is run by my first-ever coach, Peter Zánický. When I was just 9 years old, Peter used to drive Juraj and me to events all over the country, and it is so reassuring to know that my old coach now has nearly five thousand enthusiastic children turning up to compete and have a fun day out. These days the Kids Tour consists of nine events from March to September, each taking place in a beautiful Slovak town. It’s so heartwarming to see kids as young as toddlers scooting along on their balance bikes at an organized occasion like this. There’s a competitive element to every event, but the main focus is on creating a family-friendly day out with the emphasis on having fun! So far, thousands of kids have taken part, and, while I’m positive there are a number of future stars among them, it’s the smiles on their faces that make the whole enterprise particularly gratifying.

I’d like to think that any Slovak youngster looking to take up cycling as a career would have an easier time of it than we did. And who knows, perhaps one day I’ll be the guy in the car urging on the next Slovak world champion. History has this funny way of repeating itself.