“I will be in Switzerland for the World Cup but first I want to go home to recover the strength I spent this month in Spain…”. So Primoz Roglic in an interview with the Spanish newspaper Brand. After the Vuelta, the Slovenian will therefore set his sights on the world championship, although it will be interesting to understand what the dynamics will be in his national team, which he will obviously field as a frontrunner. Tadej Pogachar that he is banking on the world championship, which was almost tailor-made for him, partly to chase away a doubt that has remained in his head after last year’s bronze, and partly to put the final seal on a season that with the Giro Tour double has consigned him to history and to do what only Eddy Merck in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987.
But Primoz Roglic is Primoz Roglic and he knows all this perfectly well. But he also knows that a world championship remains a “world championship” and a champion like him cannot accept a supporting role at the table. So we’ll see. In the meantime he takes a breath and also makes a small assessment of a season that saw him arrive in Madrid wearing the red jersey in a race that should have been handled almost as a formality and that instead became so complicated, becoming a real comeback feat after the disastrous breakaway that had upset the general classification and handed the lead to a tough Ben O’Connor who ultimately placed second. For the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider, it is the fourth personal triumph in the final classification of the Vuelta (after victories in 2019, 2020 and 2021) which equals the record of successes in this race, set by the Spaniard Roberto Heras in the early 2000s.
Strange cycling story that of this champion born 35 years ago in Trbovlje, a large town of 20,000 inhabitants in Central Slovenia in an area known more for its coal deposits and thermoelectric power plants than for its cycling traditions. Strange because it started late, with a real apprenticeship in amateur races and practically by chance. In fact, cycling was not his sport right away. As a boy, his passion was skiing, very long skis that took him flying from ski jumps and with excellent results, given that at 18 he won the junior world title with the national quartet. But in 2007, in a European championship race, while he was flying he was swept away by a gust of wind that made him lose his balance and landed heavily on the snow. It was not a soft impact, on the contrary. He ended up in hospital unconscious and began a long period of convalescence before returning to jumping.
Convalescence by bike, a real love at first sight, so much so that the passion for cycling begins to flow under his skin. Excellent rouleur, also climber, also time trialist, he begins to race on his own, then with some amateur teams and in the Granfondo where he wins several times starting to get noticed. In 2013 he finally finds a professional contract with Adria Mobil, an important Slovenian team. The career of “Rogla” as everyone calls him begins here. But it is not downhill. On the contrary.
Becomes team captain for the first time at age thirty, with Jumbo Visma at the 2019 Giro where he climbed onto the third step of the podium behind Richard Carapaz and Vincenzo Nibali. Then he starts winning. The Giro, a poker at the Vuelta, the Olympic time trial gold in Tokyo, the Liège, two Dauphinés, two Tirreno-Adriaticos, two Tours of Romandie, the Tour of the Basque Country, a Paris-Nice and a Tour of Catalunya, three Tours of Emilia, a Milan-Turin and so on. In short, a “big” in all respects, someone you always have to deal with, always to be put among the favorites.
But not a predestined one. It is not clear why but “Rogla”, in the popular imagination, is as if he were always forced to chase that new generation of phenomena that responds to the names of Pogacar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Van der Poel, Van Aert. As if he were always a wheel behind. As if his image had stopped at that photograph that portrays him in the last time trial of the Tour, the one already won and then lost, which sees him arriving at the finish line of The Planche des Belles Filles with a dazed look and helmet askew beaten by a very young Pogacar, until then a promise but nothing more. A bit awkward and defeated. As often happens in cycling, as happens to many. But in his case it almost seems to weigh a bit more. That image has stuck with him a bit, he struggles to shake it off. Despite everything, despite all the victories, Despite being, with fifteen successes in the general classifications of stage races, the third most successful ever in the history of cycling just three lengths from Eddy Merckx and two from Jacques Anquetil. Not at all any two
And then after a short break we start again. As always, not as a favorite but with many goals to fight for and with the (right) belief that he can compete. I know what he will do well next year, so he answers the Spanish journalists: “These are tough decisions to make – he explains to Marca – I only know that to win a race you have to be the best, beyond the names of the rivals. Evenepoel in my team? These are always difficult topics to discuss, also because we are talking about something that has not happened. What is certain is that I have an excellent relationship with my current team, just as I still have a good one with Visma-Lease a Bike…” There is time to reflect. First we need to think about the world championship in Zurich and maybe also about Lombardia. And “Rogla” is there…