The previous winner of three World Championships titles, Oscar Freire, believes that Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) could end up with a record-breaking fourth straight title next year in Innsbruck, Austria, despite the toughness of the route.
Together with Alfredo Binda (Italy), Rik Van Steenbergen (Belgium), Eddy Merckx (Belgium), and Sagan (Slovakia), Freire is one of just five riders to have won the Worlds title three times, in 1999, 2001 and 2004. However, the Slovakian is the only one to have taken the rainbow jersey in three consecutive years.
"There's a lot of talk about the difficulty of the route in Austria, but I'm not sure if it matters that much," Freire told Cyclingnews.
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"I can remember in Portugal [in 2001], the circuit was incredibly difficult but we all took it so easy in the first part of the course. So even though they'd wanted to make it tough, they couldn't. It all came down to a bunch sprint.
"Sagan is winning a lot right now, and if he's in good shape, the route doesn't really matter. He won the Worlds in 2015 because he was able to dominate the entire race, in the second he was a bit luckier, but he found the right spot to move through a bunch in a very difficult sprint. And this year he did it perfectly, by calculating his strength right down to the last metre. But if the finish line had been 50 metres sooner or later, he wouldn't have won.
"You have to be there when it counts, but right now he's getting lucky too. You could say the wind is blowing in his favour.
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