That poor dog is traumatized for life, he will be like:

Guys I'm such a dog..., Sagan lost because of me...."and I love him so much.... Should I send him I'm sorry bark"

Sagan could wheelie to the right... I'm not sure if that event cost him 1min and 19s to win....

Swerving right and going behind them seems like a better alternative than the route he took.

It's Peter F-n Sagan, he coulda bunny hopped them both!

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

As I watched the video, I was waiting for the person with the dog to notice what the hell was going on and then run backwards. My first inclination was to go to the left as well.

I think it was a 50/50 decision in real time.

I followed the whole Tour of California one year with my two dogs. Every place where we stopped to watch the race go by - I locked my dogs in the truck before the peloton went by. I did not want to be "that guy" on any video.

I'm glad you do that but... I'll play devil's advocate here for a minute. It's entirely possible the pedestrian did not know the race was even happening. As someone who spectates the bike leg of Ironman Wisconsin each year, I'm always amazed about how quiet and fast TT bikes come zooming down the road. They are basically dead silent and moving as fast as a car. I've seen spectators completely misjudge their rate of speed and almost get smoked trying to cross a road or take a photo with a racing athlete coming right at them and that is the people that know the race is going on.

I guess the moral of my story is to assume that pedestrians do not know you're approaching on the bike. Though I'm also aware how hard it is to yell when you're 100 feet away downwind.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

I think Sagan mentioned on IG too that they were going the wrong way down a one-way street. So if the pedestrian was a local, they might have been used to just looking right when crossing there. I could see that happening to anybody.

OP - Please correct your title. Sagan did not, "nearly crash"!

These were near crashes for Peter Sagan at Milan San Remo and Paris-Roubaix last year, that with brilliant bike handling and a bit of luck, Sagan was able to avoid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgrJ0XrU_2U

It's worth watching the video for a few reasons - key one is that Sagan, stays relaxed, does not panic, looks where he wants to go, minimal to no brake usage, goes there, solves the problem and get's back to business.

I find a lot of the problems/crashes with some/many triathletes and inexperienced cyclists comes from - panic setting in quickly, and then making aggressive moves with the bike, and very often OVER-steering/braking and compensating - it's that latter things that cause the crash!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog