Peter Sagan has confirmed that he will be riding the European Championship road race in Trento, Italy on September 12.
The Bora-Hansgrohe rider hasn't returned to racing since abandoning the Tour de France on stage 12, where he suffered a knee infection that had developed after a crash on the third stage of the race.
Since his operation and subsequent recovery, Sagan has been riding with friends and his brother Juraj (also Bora-Hansgrohe) in the Pyrenees on his road and mountain bikes, postings some exhilarating videos on Instagram.
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Sagan said: "My recovery is going well. I am training intensively to get back to my best level. I can't possibly predict how the European Championship race will turn out, but I can promise that I will give everything for the best possible result."
The Slovakian rider who has won the World Championships three times in his career has also won the Europeans when it first came available for the professional men's peloton in 2016, but did not wear the jersey due to him being world champion at the time.
"Without a doubt, the European Championships have seen an impressive growth since 2016." Sagan continued.
"I don’t know to what extent my victory contributed to this, but I’m happy to add my small stone even if it’s just a little bit. As for this year’s edition, I’m sure it will have a top-level field that will guarantee an exciting race."
However, Sagan is likely to face an amazing list of riders that include Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Tour of Flanders winner Kasper Asgreen (Deceuninck - Quick-Step), Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo), reigning champion Giacomo Nizzolo (Qhubeka-NextHash), Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck - Quick-Step), Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) and many more stars besides on the hilly route.
The route takes place around Trento over a distance of 179.2km with 73km of riding over tricky medium sized mountains with the highest, Candriai, peaking at over 1000 metres.
It's then onto the laps with 73.4km to go with eight laps of a 13.2km circuit including the Povo climb which is a short 3.6km with an average gradient of 4.7 per cent.
