THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT

As Peter Sagan hangs up his road wheels, James Shrubsall tries to uncover the man beneath the mane

There will be something missing from next year’s WorldTour. A Peter Sagan-shaped hole is set to open up as the enigmatic Slovak retires from top-level road racing. He won’t be gone completely though – he is staying on to target the mountain bike race in the Paris Olympics next year.

“You cannot put a lion in a cage,” says Sagan’s old boss at Bora-Hansgrohe, Ralph Denk. He was talking about letting the Slovak off the leash to enjoy mountain biking or skiing. But with Sagan’s recent retirement from the WorldTour, it feels like that metaphor has never been more apt. The ultimate uncaging.

Over the course of a wildly successful pro career Sagan, now 33, has earned the nicknames ‘Rambo’ and ‘the Terminator’, conjuring an image of someone you’d probably run a mile from before asking for an autograph.

And while as a pro rider trying to win races, Sagan was definitely not someone you would want to encounter at the sharp end of a tough one-dayer or a bunch sprint, his contemporaries paint a picture of a soft-spoken, diligent and sometimes playful person – not scary, at least until you tried to beat him to the line.

Oliver Naesen, who was a key rival for Sagan during the Slovak’s halcyon period, describes him as having “silent class”.

“He wasn’t a screamer,” says the Belgian Ag2r-Citroën rider, who has podiumed in races including Milan-San Remo, Ghent-Wevelgem and E3. "Even though he had the funky hair and, you know, the ski goggles and the podiums and all that.