The likelihood of Peter Sagan riding for the Bora-Hansgrohe team for 2017 has received a boost after Astana team manager Alexander Vinokourov confirmed that talks to sign the world champion have not moved forward since the Giro d’Italia.
Cyclingnews understands that Sagan will decide his future during the Tour de France, with a final deal to be thrashed out in the following weeks. It seems that Astana and Bora-Hansgrohe are the only two teams under consideration for Sagan’s future, with the German team now the favourite to secure his signature and so pay him the highest salary in the professional peloton.
Sagan is about to start the Tour de France with the Tinkoff team and target stage victories in the sprints and another green points jersey. Victory during the opening weekend of racing could also give Sagan the race leader’s yellow jersey, one of the rare goals the Slovakian has to still achieve.
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On the second rest day of the Giro in late May, Cyclingnews revealed that the Astana team was in talks to sign Sagan, with confirmation coming from within the Kazakhstan team and other sources. Vinokourov was keen to sign Sagan to fill the hole in the team’s line-up left by Giro d’Italia winner Vincenzo Nibali, who is set to lead the new Bahrain Cycling team in 2017. Now Vinokourov has admitted that he expects Nibali to leave Astana after 2016 and conceded that negotiations with Sagan’s agent Giovanni Lombardi have fizzled out.
“We started talks with Sagan at the time of the Giro d’Italia but things haven’t really moved forward since then. I think it’s difficult that Sagan will join Astana,” Vinokourov told Cyclingnews and Gazzetta dello Sport on Friday after the Astana team’s final press conference before the start of the Tour de France.
“I don’t know if he’s made a final decision yet, so perhaps there’s still a chance. We’ve made an offer, let’s see what he decides. We like to sign good riders but if Peter doesn’t join our team then we’ll be fine. We’ve got some hugely talented riders in the team already. We’ve got Fabio Aru, who is only 25 but who won the Vuelta a España and we’ve got Miguel Angel Lopez, who is only 22 but recently won the Tour de Suisse.”
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