At 34, Primož Roglič knows the clock is ticking on his time to compete with proven Tour de France winners Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) at La Grand Boucle and conquer the race that he most desires.
Roglič will return to the Tour for his sixth appearance in the summer after skipping the 2023 edition to race the Giro-Vuelta double. That decision paid off with overall victory in Italy and third in Spain, leaving just the Tour de France in his way of completing the Grand Tour set.
He will lead new team Bora-Hansgrohe as one of the four heavy favourites come July alongside his former teammate Vingegaard, compatriot Pogačar and the on-debut Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep). It’s a matchup he described as “beautiful” to Eurosport in January.
“I’m just super happy, and hopefully, we can all go to the Tour, and that’s something that is the best for cycling, the best for the people to watch. It’s beautiful, huh,” said Roglič.
“It’s the best for us - to have the highest level - and the best one will win.”
Roglič was aware that if he continued with Jumbo-Visma, the preference of leadership would be clear in Vingegaard’s favour at the Tour - part of his reasoning to move to the German team - and it’s a reality that he saw in the Dane when he joined the Dutch squad as a 22-year-old.
“I knew that one day he would be the one. I knew that he could possibly win the Tour, and now he has won it two times,” Roglič told Rouleur magazine in its latest issue.
“For me, it is still the Grand Tour I am missing. But I still want to win it. There came a point where I had to make a choice. It wasn’t easy to leave the best team in the world, a team that has won everything, and come to a completely different team.
“At my age, I will not have 10 more opportunities to win the Tour. At 34, you need to have new things to keep going. I never want to look back and say I’d never tried a different team.”
The Slovenian is currently in Tenerife training up Mount Teide with teammates Aleksandr Vlasov, Jai Hindley and Lennard Kämna ahead of his Bora-Hansgrohe debut in March.
Roglič starts his build-up to the Tour at Paris-Nice in just under two weeks, where he is set to face off with Evenepoel. It’s a race he’s won in the past, but the Slovenian suggested he may have to change his approach to pre-Tour races to have the best shot at the maillot jaune.
“Until now, I have almost always gone into a race to win, but that might change this year. If I have to go to a race to train this year, I will,” Roglič said. “The focus is on the Tour.”
He’s identified the key moments of the Tour in multiple interviews as the opening duo of tough stages in Italy, stage 4 to Valloire, the gravel stage 9 and, of course, the showpiece finale of stages in the south of France.
But for now, all he’s focused on is staying healthy after revealing to L'Equipe that he was ill several times in winter.
With the signing of Roglič and energy drinks giant Red Bull being given the green light to take over the German team later in the season, Bora-Hansgrohe have given themselves the best chance to achieve a first Tour de France podium and become one of cycling’s super teams.
But Roglič, a four-time Grand Tour winner and former runner-up at the Tour, is, of course, only thinking of that top spot.
“We are not the biggest team, at least not yet,” he said. “I want to make this team as good as possible as quickly as possible, and everyone here is enthusiastic.
“Time will tell if we can win the Tour. But we can wake up every morning dreaming about it. For me, the key point is to go into the Tour ready to win."
