Sagan powers to victory in Porto Cervo

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Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) gave further notice of his burgeoning talent with a dominant victory on stage one of the Giro di Sardegna. In an uphill sprint to the line, the young Slovak simply had too much for former world champion Alessandro Ballan (BMC) and teammate Daniel Oss, and he won by a healthy margin.

The powerful finishing sprint that saw Sagan surge clear in the closing metres was one of the hallmarks of the five quality wins that he took in his debut season in 2010, but the 21-year-old admitted that he is still discovering his capabilities.

“I still don’t really know what kind of rider I am or what I can do,” Sagan said after the finish. “I know that I’m young, I haven’t raced much and I haven’t won much. Don’t compare me to Philippe Gilbert: he’s a champion.”

Sagan was expertly piloted to victory by his Liquigas-Cannondale teammates in the finale. Vincenzo Nibali, making his seasonal debut, was prominent on the front of the peloton in the closing kilometres before handing over the baton to Eros Capecchi and finally to Daniel Oss. Indeed, it was Oss who led out the sprint through the final bend and he explained that the men in lime green had benefited from some prior knowledge of the course.

“We’d already been on these roads during the team training camp [in December],” he said. “Then during the race we went past the finish line, albeit in the opposite direction, but that allowed us to understand the importance of the last bend.”

Alessandro Ballan simply had no answer to Sagan’s startling acceleration once Oss had pulled over, and he realised early on that he was racing for second place on the drag to the line.

“Sagan took the last corner stronger than me, but he probably would have won anyway,” Ballan admitted.

A deceptively tough day

The stage was animated by a long breakaway featuring Arkimedes Arguelyes (Katusha) and Canadian champion Will Routley (Team Spidertech p/b c10). The duo escaped after 7km and built up a maximum lead of 7:40. Arguelyes went clear alone on the climb of the San Pantaleo, but with Lampre-ISD and BMC chasing hard behind, his move was never likely to last to the finish line.

Meanwhile, Miche’s Gianluca Randazzo launched an ambitious attempt to bridge up to the leaders but in spite of his best efforts, the Sicilian found himself mired in no-man’s land. On deceptively tough terrain, he was the first of the escapees to be gobbled up, while Routley was the next to give best to a peloton that now had the strong Liquigas-Cannondale squad upping the ante.

Arguelyes managed to hold out until 9km from the finish, and once he was caught a number of riders tried their luck on the run-in to Porto Cervo. Stefano Pirazzi (CSF-Colnago) and Danilo Di Luca (Katusha) were among the aggressors in the closing stages, but with BMC and, in particular, Liquigas-Cannondale stringing out the bunch in single file, their efforts were doomed to failure.

In the sprint to the line, it was Oss who led into the final bend and then swung over to allow Sagan punch home the victory, and he gratefully galloped clear to add another impressive win to his palmares. While Ballan pipped Oss to be the best of the rest behind, Sagan even had time to sit up and savour his win as he crossed the line, and his ambitions will surely be high, both this week and in the months ahead.