photo credits @ Tinkoff
Peter Sagan will join the newly reorganized Bora-Hansgrophe team for 2017, and the German squad is hoping that the World Champion’s presence will serve to bolster the team’s image as it prepares to step up to the WorldTour level next year.
“We are a pro continental team at the moment with no massive riders, but good riders like Sam Bennett,” said Scott Thwaites, who will be exiting the team at the end of the season. “Sagan is just at another level, the current world champion and wins around 20 races a year. Everything changes when he comes to a team, it revolves around him”.
“Unless you are a climber then you are pretty much going to be a worker for Sagan. If you are sprinter or lead out man, he is always going to be faster than you and you have to fill in the worker role.”
“Will it be team Sagan? Hopefully we are the Bora team next year, but Sagan has a really big image and the Sagan world is really big,” said team rider Rüdiger Selig.“The whole image will change next year.”
Selig used to be Alexander Kristoff’s main lead-out man on team Katusha, and said that he ought to do the same for Sagan. “That’s my job I hope so to be the last man.”
He and Austrian Gregor Mühlberger are both riding their first Grand Tour in the Vuelta a España, and are relieved for the chance to do so before the team steps up another level in the WorldTour and with Sagan.
“Yeah maybe I can’t do a Grand Tour next year because there are so many good guys in the team,” Mühlberger added.
“We will see in the next year when we become WorldTour. I think we will do many hard races and it will be different to this year.”
In addition, Sagan’s current Tinkoff teammates, Juraj Sagan, Michael Kolar, Erik Baska and Maciej Bodnar, will also be joining Bora-Hansgrophe for 2017.
“For the whole team, it will be a lot different,” Mühlberger said. “With Peter there will be much more photographers and journalists, but it will be good for the team. It may not be good for some, but most of the riders are looking forward to it.”
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