Long before Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) stormed up from the beach to take the Amgen Tour of California stage win in Morro Bay earlier this year, his older brother Juraj Sagan was churning out kilometre after kilometre on the front with fellow Slovakian Martin Velits (Quick-Step Floors) so that their sprinters could have their day.
It was a performance that repeated itself at the Tour de France on Monday, when Juraj hit the front of the bunch throughout the early kilometres to keep the breakaway in check so that Peter could fly up the Côte de Religieuses in Longwy and take his first win of the 2017 Tour.
It's a familiar pattern for the brothers who are separated by just 13 months: Juraj opens the door and Peter bursts through on his way to another level.
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Juraj was the first of the Sagans to get into cycling, taking up the mountain bike when he was "nine or ten," with Peter following him into the sport two months later. Peter's exploits as an up-and-coming cyclist are well known, having won a junior mountain bike World Championship and then going second at the cyclo-cross Worlds and the junior Paris-Roubaix.
While Peter was lighting up his final year of junior racing, Juraj was slugging it out on the Continental circuit, finishing his first year in the U23 ranks with an 11th place finish at the 2007 World Championships in Stuttgart.
"I was good in the junior category," Juraj Sagan told Cyclingnews during an interview in California. "I had nice results, but still I had the school, and after we don't have a lot of the managers in Slovakia and I didn't know anyone."
A special bond
Earning his keep
A career goal
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