After riding a strategically race from the start, Peter Sagan showed he had the nous to be in the right place at the right time at Gent-Wevelgem, only to be denied in the closing kilometres.
After working hard to try and bridge to a late attack, the Slovak rider found himself in a group unwilling to work with him, and had to settle for third spot on the day.
Clearly disappointed with the reluctance of his group to work with him to bridge the gap, Sagan said: “I don’t know what Terpstra wanted to do, because he attacked to go in the breakaway, but afterwards he didn’t want to work.
“This is just one example of how you can lose the race against me. What can I do – we’re not teammates – I can’t work for everyone, only for them to beat me in the sprint. I’m not disappointed – I’m more motivated now. If you win all the time, you lose your motivation. Now I’m motivated to take some more wins. We’ll see what happens at Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.”
“To start playing games with 15km to go is not the way to win races”, said Bora-hansgrohe sports director, Jens Zemke. “At the moment, it seems that some are more interested in beating Peter than in winning, but that’s cycling. Peter was strong again and always in control until that point – that’s the good thing about today. Also, the team was strong. We still had four guys to support Peter going into the finale.”
