Team Slovakia
2 (2+0)
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Road Race: Lukáš Kubiš, Juraj Sagan
Individual Time Trial: Lukáš Kubiš
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Last 14th sport in which Slovakia will participate in Tokyo 2020.
Slovakia never missed the Road Cycling competition at the Olympics since its independence, but never won any medal.
Atlanta 1996 (7 athletes 5M+2W), Sydney 2000 (4, 4+0), Athens 2004 (2, 2+0), Beijing 2008 (3, 3+0), London 2012 (1, 1+0), Rio 2016 (1, 1+0)
This time the country qualified via UCI Olympic qualifying ranking of 2019 Two quotas for the men competition.
The federation logically picked our biggest sport star Peter Sagan to compete at his 3rd olympics, and for the first time to have actually a teammate to help him in the race, he immediately chose his older brother Juraj Sagan.
Sadly, Peter will not be able to compete, the former 3 back to back times road race world champion and 7 times Tour de France green jersey winner had an accident during this year edition of Tour de France, it appears at the end to be more costly than we secretly were hoping.
Knee surgery last Sunday made it all clear. Peter wanted to represent, the Olympics are basically the only triumph he still missing in his CV and wanted to have fun alongside his brother representing Slovakia at the Olympics. The medical staff was strict and uncomprimising. No olympics, was the verdict.
So yesterday, our cycling federation announced the name of his substitute. It will Lukáš Kubiš (yesterday was also decided he will be the one representing the country in Time Trial, Juraj Sagan will go only for the road race, the leader of the team for the road race will be designed at the team meeting in Rio.
Lukáš Kubiš 20 years old slovak cycling talent, was yesterday 13th of July 2021, the only happy slovak cycling and sport fan you would found. He received the official invitation to replace injured Peter Sagan in Tokyo. What a moment for the Dukla Banská Bystrica rider to experience his olympic debut already at such young age. Lukáš has some experiences with such event but at the junior level, he will be our sole Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympics athlete in Tokyo. Lukáš was also selected to represent Slovakia in Time Trial instead of Juraj Sagan who will now focus only on the road race.
Juraj Sagan the 32 years old brother of our sporting world super-star Peter. Bora-Hangrohe rider, known for his endless and devoted work as a "domestique" for leaders in the peloton is going to his first careers Olympics. He expected to work hard in the Road race for his brother and then focus at himself in the time trial. Last days events sadly changed the whole situation, now Juraj will not have his brother with him in Rio and will compete only in the road race, where he is expected to be the team leader.