Published April 3, 2026 05:58AM
Peter Sagan is tipping his cap in awe to Tadej Pogačar, whom he admits has already surpassed even his own golden era with a dominance bordering on routine.
Pogačar — chasing a third Tour of Flanders crown on Sunday — is operating on a different plane, Sagan admitted in a pair of interviews this week.
“What he does is inexplicable. He is the god of cycling,” Sagan told El País. “He’s unique. He’s one step above me and the rest.”
Sagan also said Pogačar is dominating in ways that are changing the sport, and perhaps not always for the best.
“They should only let him race in a separate category. The WorldTour is too small for him,” Sagan told Het Nieuwsblad. “As a result, he also makes cycling boring in a certain way. You can’t say it any other way.”
After watching Pogačar win Milan-San Remo, Sagan said the Slovenian is a league of his own.
“There is only one reason why Milan-San Remo was interesting this year: he crashed, and we suddenly got a nice fight,” Sagan told the Belgian daily.
“Even I never thought he would attack the Cipressa after his crash. But Pogačar is so crazy that he even does that,” Sagan said. “They 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’s so boring on other days.”
10 years after
Not that he is criticizing Pogačar, it’s just that Sagan is saying out loud what some are already thinking.
More than a decade ago, Sagan was the peloton’s wunderkind who brought a fresh rock ’n’ roll attitude to racing.
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’s finish line antics and explosive racing helped usher in a new era.
Sagan is far from the rolling circus that he dominated in many ways the same way Pogačar is today, and said he doesn’t miss the pressure that came with being at the top.
“Everyone looks at him as the god of cycling, and in a way he is, but he has to know how to deal with that,” Sagan told El País. “A god cannot damage his image with any foolishness.”
This week marks 10 years since Sagan’s 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’s on Pogačar’s career to-do list.
Sagan would often light up racing much in the way Pogačar is now, but his career was waning just as cycling’s modern obsession with data, aerodynamics, and nutrition was taking hold.
Sagan left with 121 career victories and three consecutive world titles, a record that Pogačar could equal at this year’s world championships in Canada.
“That was a good victory”, Sagan said in an interview with Het Nieuwsblad. “It was the 100th Tour of Flanders, wasn’t it? And I won in the rainbow jersey. But what I liked the most was who came second, Fabian Cancellara.
“I so often finished second or third behind him. Finally, I could beat that old guy. That made that Ronde especially special for me.”
‘I didn’t like to suffer’
Now 36, he is staying busy in retirement. After surgery ended his Olympic mountain bike ambitions in 2024, Sagan says he’s embraced life as a full-time dad.
Nearly a decade beyond his glory years, he’s staying visible with sponsor and media appearances, including a stint on Slovakia’s Let’s Dance.
Sagan, who was the generational icon of his day, often drew the same comparisons to Eddy Merckx and cycling’s greats that Pogačar is today.
Retired since 2023, Sagan admits that Pogačar 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.
“Times have changed,” he said. “I was much smarter. I liked to win, but I didn’t 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.
“Maybe Eddy Merckx did something similar in his day, but cycling was very different then. I don’t think you can compare,” Sagan said. “The reality is that when Tadej was born, the planets aligned. What he does is beyond words.”
Sagan and Pogačar overlapped in their respective careers, but by 2020, Sagan’s star was fading while the Slovenian was blowing up the script of what modern cycling can look like.