Showing strong form already this year and looking ominously good against Fabian Cancellara in last Saturday’s Strade Bianche, Peter Sagan is one that many people believe could be a big threat in the Classics this season. Former world number one Sean Kelly concurs with this view, saying that Sagan is the rider he tips for very big performances in the upcoming Classic races.
“In the Tour of Flanders he was very, very impressive,” Kelly said, referring to last year’s Ronde van Vlaanderen, where the Slovakian narrowly missed out on joining the winning three man breakaway. “With a bit more experience - and I think he will have gained that - he is the one that we will maybe see as being very much up there in a lot of the Classics.”
Kelly was speaking to VeloNation at the recent launch of the An Post Chainreaction Sean Kelly team in Tielt, Belgium, and enthused about Sagan’s potential. In the video below he explains his reasons for that endorsement of Sagan’s ability, but also states that he could be a more multidimensional rider than many of those who are currently racing.
“A lot of the riders focus on one or the other,” Kelly said, referring to the varied programmes that riders tend to take now, in terms of specialization. “They go for the Classic races or they try to become a stage race rider. I think that Sagan is the only one capable of doing both. He has got the talent to do that, I think.”
Kelly also commented on the general classification riders who were to the fore in the Tour of Oman. Many of them are currently in this week’s Tirreno Adriatico, and will once again race for the win. The Irishman has noted that there is a very different approach now to racing, when compared to the past.
“If you look back last year and you see Wiggins, he was there in Paris-Nice in the early part of the season. He was in real good shape. We see Froome this year, he is showing form very early. That is a bit of a turn around…if you go back three, four, five years ago, the guys who are really going to be contention for the Tour de France, we really didn’t see them as active and in good a shape as they are showing in the last two years.”
In the video above Kelly elaborates on these points and also gives his opinions on Cadel Evans, Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck. He believes the latter has a different approach to his contemporaries and suggests that this may be part of the reason why he has taken so long to come back to form after his injury, but also adds that it is too soon to know if he can fully recover from the pelvic fracture he suffered during last year’s Critérium du Dauphiné.