cycling: Peter Sagan also wins European Road Championship

Cycling: Peter Sagan is European Road Champion 2016. After a little more than 235 km in Plumelec, France, the Slovakian world champion gave the competition no chance and relegated Julian Alaphilippe and Daniel Moreno to places in the sprint. Simon Geschke was unlucky after a strong race and a defect during the last 10km destroyed all medal hopes.

The difficult circuit around Plumelec designed the European Road Championships 2016 as many had expected in advance: the teams and favorites watched each other for a long time, nobody went on the offensive and wanted to use up grains unnecessarily before the decisive finale. So the race rippled along for a long time until about 15 km before the finish Moreno Moser plucked up courage and attacked. The timing was good, because the complicated course with its numerous short ones had become more and more selective towards the end and the leading group was no longer that big.

The 25-year-old Italian then also benefited from the fact that the leading group hesitated for a long time and disagreed about the reaction. Within a short time, a gap of more than 30 seconds formed before the pursuers finally reacted. Up to this point, Simon Geschke had also been well placed, but his medal hopes were suddenly ended by a flat tire 8 km before the finish line.

Things looked good for Moser at the front for a long time, but the Cannondale pro's strength began to drop in the last few kilometers and at the same time the pressure from the pursuers increased. So it happened as it had to happen: The Italian was caught in the last kilometer and what followed was nothing less than an impressive demonstration of power by world champion Peter Sagan. Although of course everyone was paying attention to the Slovak, he didn't let himself be disturbed, waited a long time and finally used the climb up to the finish line to the Côte de Dacoudal to easily outperform his competitors. Behind it was much closer: Daniel Moreno had to admit defeat at the very last moment to the strong Julian Alaphilippe.

Final result road EM 2016 Plumelec