The Serge Baguet Award

Professional cycling is full of carefully constructed sentences.

Riders are trained to stay calm, say the right things, and avoid controversy. Interviews are polished. Emotions are controlled. Everything is safe.

But every now and then, something real breaks through.

A moment where the emotion of the race spills over. Where a rider forgets the cameras, forgets the media training, and simply reacts like a human being who has just pushed himself to the absolute limit.

Those moments have become rare. But they are part of what makes cycling beautiful.

That’s why Pelotonic created The Serge Baguet Award.

An award for the most honest, raw, and unfiltered moment in professional cycling.

Moments where a rider or DS says what everyone feels but nobody usually says out loud. Moments that remind us that behind the watts, tactics, and data are still human beings experiencing extreme effort, frustration, joy, and relief.

The award is named after Serge Baguet, a fantastic Belgian rider who sadly passed away far too young.

The inspiration comes from one of the most iconic post-race interviews in Belgian cycling history.

After winning a stage in the 2001 Tour de France, Baguet gave an interview that has since become part of the collective memory of cycling fans in Belgium. The interview is in Dutch, but the raw emotion is unmistakable in any language.

“Unbelievable - I take the stage! Man, man… If Lelli had won, I would have killed him.”

He said it half laughing, half furious, completely exhausted after a brutal day in the breakaway where Massimiliano Lelli had contributed almost nothing to the work.

It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t media-trained.

It was unfiltered. It was real.

And that authenticity is exactly what made it unforgettable.

Moments like these remind us why people fall in love with the sport in the first place. They turn viewers into lifelong fans. They capture the chaos, emotion, and human drama that make cycling different from almost any other sport.

The Serge Baguet Award celebrates those moments.

Not the most diplomatic quote. Not the most PR-friendly interview.

But the moment that was most real, most honest, and most unfiltered.