Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) lost any hope of contesting the E3 Harelbeke when a crash on a critical section of the course left him without the service of his team car. The vehicles had been diverted at 47 kilometers to go, just before Sagan`s crash damaged his shift lever. The world champion had already missed the crucial selection and was sitting behind Stijn Vandenbergh when the big Belgian crashed heavily ahead of the Paterberg. After checking that his stricken former teammate Oscar Gatto was OK, Sagan remounted but found that his gears were jammed and his team car was nowhere in sight. He bashed his handlebars in a bid to magically summon a fix, but any hopes he had of winning the race quickly evaporated. `It was a tough race. I didn`t jump on the front group when they attacked and made the decisive move, and then the crash wiped out all the chances I had to bridge the gap,` said Sagan. ADVERTISEMENT Bora-Hansgrohe directeur sportif Jens Zemke insisted Sagan still had the chance to regain contact with the head of the race but explained that the bad luck couldn`t have come at a more inopportune point - where team cars weren`t allowed behind the riders due to the steepness of the Paterberg. `We were standing there for three or four minutes, where there was a deviation with the team cars, so we couldn`t do anything,` he told Cyclingnews and another reporter. `[Sagan] had to continue and I think the gears weren`t working after the crash, then it was the Paterberg. We were waiting on the downhill and gave him new a new bike, or tried to give him a new bike, but he said `no, no I continue`. So it was hopeless. It took too long.`
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