Peter Sagan

Peter Sagan (born 26 January 1990) is a Slovak professional road bicycle racer for World Tour team Tinkoff-Saxo Sagan had a successful junior cyclo-cross and mountain bike racing career, winning the Junior World Championship in 2008, before moving to road racing.

Sagan is considered one of cycling's most promising young talents, having earned many prestigious victories in his early twenties. Supporting this view are victories in: one World Championship, two Paris–Nice stages, three Tirreno–Adriatico stages, one in the Tour de Romandie, two and the overall classification in the Tour de Pologne, a record thirteen in the Tour of California, and eleven in the Tour de Suisse. He has won eight stages in Grand Tours: four in the Vuelta a España and four in the Tour de France. He was also the winner of the points classification in the Tour de France, in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015; as a result, Sagan became the first rider to win the classification in his first four attempts.

Early life and amateur career

Tour de France

The Tour de France (French pronunciation: ​[tuʁ də fʁɑ̃s]) is an annual multiple stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally making passes through nearby countries. The race was first organized in 1903 to increase paper sales for the magazine L'Auto; it is currently run by the Amaury Sport Organisation. The race has been held annually since its first edition in 1903 except when it was stopped for the two World Wars. As the Tour gained prominence and popularity the race was lengthened and its reach began to extend around the globe. Participation expanded from a primarily French field, as riders from all over the world began to participate in the race each year. The Tour is a UCI World Tour event, which means that the teams that compete in the race are mostly UCI WorldTeams, with the exception of the teams that the organizers invite.

The Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España make up cycling's prestigious, three-week-long Grand Tours; the Tour is the oldest and generally considered the most prestigious of the three. Traditionally, the race is held primarily in the month of July. While the route changes each year, the format of the race stays the same with the appearance of time trials, the passage through the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and the Alps, and the finish on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The modern editions of the Tour de France consist of 21 day-long segments (stages) over a 23-day period and cover around 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi). The race alternates between clockwise and counterclockwise circuits of France.

Mark Cavendish

Mark Simon Cavendish, MBE (born 21 May 1985) is a British professional road racing cyclist who currently rides for UCI ProTeam Team Dimension Data. Originally a track cyclist specialising in the madison, points race, and scratch race disciplines, he has competed on the road since 2006, rising to prominence as a sprinter, widely considered one of the best of his era.

On the track Cavendish won gold in the Madison at the 2005 and 2008 world championships riding for Great Britain, with Rob Hayles and Bradley Wiggins respectively, and in the scratch race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games riding for Isle of Man.

As a road cyclist, Cavendish achieved eleven wins in his first professional season, passing the record held by Alessandro Petacchi. Cavendish has won twenty-six Tour de France stages putting him third on the all-time list and fourth on the all-time list of Grand Tour stage winners with forty-four victories. He won the road race at the 2011 road world championships, becoming the second British rider to do so after Tom Simpson in 1965. Other notable wins include the 2009 Milan–San Remo classic and the points classification in all three of the grand tours: the 2010 Vuelta a España, the 2011 Tour de France, and the 2013 Giro d'Italia. In 2012 he became the first person to win the final Champs-Élysées stage in the Tour de France in four consecutive years.

Sagan

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Tour de Pologne

The Tour de Pologne (French for "Tour of Poland"), official abbreviation TdP, is a road bicycle racing stage race. It consists of seven or eight stages and is usually around 1,200 km in length. The race was first held in 1928. Until 1952 the race was held sporadically, but since then it has been an annual race. Until early 1993 the race was open to amateur cyclists only and most of its winners came from Poland.

The international cycling association, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), made TdP part of the UCI ProTour in 2005, and part of the UCI World Ranking calendar in 2009.

History

The initial concept of the TdP's multi-stage format was modeled after the popular Tour de France. The proposal for organizing the event was submitted jointly by the Warsaw Cycling Society and the Przegląd Sportowy sports newspaper published in Kraków. Thanks to their initiative, a Wyścig Dookoła Polski (Race Around Poland, the original name of the TdP) was held in the summer of 1928 . The historic first edition of the race took place on 7–11 September 1928. 71 cyclists rode almost 1,500 km — the winner was Felix Więcek from the Bydgoszcz Cycling Club.