Peter Sagan (Total Energy) has decided to diversify his ambitions on two wheels and will "party" in the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in late August in the E-MTB category.

Sagan, a three-time world champion on the road, completed the Tour de France on July 24 without a win; the 32-year-old finished in the top 10 on five stages, including fifth on the Champs Elysees on the final day.

After the Tour de France, Sagan will travel to the United States for high-altitude training before returning to Europe to compete in the one-day BEMER Cyclassics in Germany on August 21 and the Bretagne Classic in France on August 28. He will return to Europe to compete in the one-day BEMER Cyclassics in Germany on August 21 and the Bretagne Classic in France on August 28. In the meantime, Sagan will participate in the E-MTB World Championships.

"I won't be able to compete, and that's not why I'm going. For me it's a party and a way to give back to the fans," Sagan told La Gazzetta dello Sport (open in new tab).

Sagan began racing cyclocross and mountain biking as a junior, winning the junior cross-country world title in 2008, and in 2010 he began focusing on road racing as an elite rider, winning Paris-Nice, Tour de Romandie, and Tour of California, but his love of mountain biking led him to choose to represent Slovakia in off-road competition at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

In the past two seasons, Sagan has contracted COVID-19 several times and tested positive for coronavirus one week before the 2022 Slovak national road race championships. Sagan won his eighth road race and joined the TotalEnergies team at the Tour de France.

For pre-Tour training, Sagan spent time in the United States. He participated for the first time in the very popular Unbound Gravel 100 gravel race in Emporia, Kansas, in the summer, finishing 13th, 54 minutes behind 21-year-old Ethan Overson, the winner of the Pro Open men's race.

The Mountain Bike World Championships will be held August 21-28 in Les Gets, France, with the women's and men's E-MTB events taking place on the Friday of race week.

This is the fourth year that the E-MTB category has been part of the World Championships. The first world title in electric mountain biking was contested in Mont Sainte Anne in Quebec, Canada, in 2019, with South Africa's Alan Hatherly taking the men's crown and Switzerland's Nathalie Schneiter the women's. In 2020, Tom Pidcock participated in the E-MTB World Championships won the championships in a solo effort.