Peter Sagan could skip cobbled Classics in favour of Giro d'Italia

Bora-Hansgrohe leader Peter Sagan could stick with his pre-COVID-19 race programme of riding both the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France this season, racing 42 stages in just 58 days due to the rescheduled calendar that sees the Tour de France in September and the Giro d'Italia in October.

The UCI decided to overlap the Giro d'Italia and many of the Classics, meaning that if Sagan rides the Corsa Rosa he will miss both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix for the first time since 2013.

The 2020 Giro is set to now take place from October 3-25, while the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix have been rescheduled for October 18 and October 25, respectively. Sagan won Paris-Roubaix in 2018 and took victory at the Tour of Flanders in 2016 during a decade of targeting the Classics. 

When the UCI presented the rescheduled calendar it was widely expected Sagan would ride the Tour de France in pursuit of an eighth green points jersey and then target the Classics. However, according to reports in Slovakia and Belgian paper Het Nieuwsblad, Sagan and his Bora-Hansgrohe team have opted to stick to the original pan, with Sagan finally making his debut at the Giro d'Italia.

In previous years, since 2010, Sagan has tackled May's now-defunct Tour of California on the back of the cobbled Classics and ahead of the Tour de France. This season, Sagan was set to ride the spring Classics, followed by the Giro, the Tour and the similarly postponed Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

It would be Sagan's first time at the Giro d'Italia, where he'll look to try to win the race's ciclamino points jersey to add to his seven – or what he'll hope by that point is eight – green points jerseys won at the Tour de France.

Bora-Hansgrohe have still to confirm Sagan's race programme but did not deny the reports in Slovakia, only saying his and all the team's race programmes  will be finalised at the team's June training camp in Austria.

"Traditionally, this is not only where the foundation for the coming months of racing is laid, but also the broad outlines of each rider's race programme," Ralph Scherzer told Het Nieuwsblad, with the team set to head to the mountainous Tyrol region of Austria in mid-June.