Primož Roglič’s dream of winning a yellow jersey died on an A-road leading into the small french town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot on Thursday. Riders toppled down in front of him and he was left with no way to avoid flying over their bikes and bodies, before coming face to face with the tarmac himself. It was a scene we have seen far too often: Roglič struggled to the line bloodied and bruised, unable to even hold the wheels of his teammates who tried valiantly to pace him back to the finish. Alongside stage winner Biniam Girmay, the rest of the general classification contenders finished four minutes before him. The Tour de France was done. A denouement later confirmed with his abandonment before stage 13.
Roglič is a rider who has had his fair share of bad luck in recent seasons. His most well-remembered incidents include the 2021 edition of Paris-Nice when he crashed twice in one stage, losing the yellow jersey and finishing with a dislocated shoulder. He crashed out of the Tour de France that year too then also abandoned the Tour and the Vuelta a España in 2022 due to more injuries. Things looked to get back on track for Roglič last year when it came to keeping things upright, but his crash in Itzulia in April 2024 brought back unhappy memories of the Slovenian rider having one too many dates with the asphalt.
His Tour de France campaign this season – now with his new team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, had got off to a solid start, but the phantom poor fortune that seems to follow Roglič around returned on stage 11 which turned out to be a key GC battle to Le Lioran. The 34-year-old slid out on a corner approaching the finish line that day after battling with Remco Evenepoel for a podium place in the general classification. He got up and rode on without losing any time, but there’s no denying that the innocuous fall felt like a sort of bad omen.
And so it was. It was a piece of concrete road furniture which caused the ripple effect in the peloton which brought Roglič down on stage 12, taking him out of the general classification battle and then this year's Tour altogether.
The disappointment will be felt for the Slovenian on a personal level, but it will spread widely among his team, too. With their new sponsor in Red Bull for 2024, the stakes were high for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe to perform this year given the investment they have made in bringing Roglič to the team – and building a support network of domestiques around him. The heartbreak of Rolf Aldag, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s lead sports director, was clear as he spoke to the media a few moments after Roglič had crossed the finish line.
Emerging out of the team bus from behind a drawn curtain – Roglič sat inside to be analysed by the team’s doctors – Aldag spoke to media in hushed tones after a dark day for his team. “The doctor will examine him and see how he is. He had a shower just now but he got to the finish line. Obviously he lost some time and that was not good and certainly we wanted to avoid that,” Aldag said.
“The crash happened and he lost a lot of time but we care about his health right now which is the most important. We have different thoughts right now than fighting for the podium. It's about how he is and if he can continue or not.”
“We have the best medical team you can think of and we can see what tomorrow and tonight brings. He lost around four minutes on GC but that’s not relevant. It's the fact that he crashed really hard, it’s never good and never nice, it certainly wasn’t the plan.”
Questions were posed to Aldag regarding the road furniture which caused Roglič to crash: was it properly signposted? Does the organisation need to look at the safety of today’s run in?
“I think we deal every day with safety. We know after a day like this everybody would be really tired and things happen. That’s the situation of sport. Road furniture is there 365 days per year to protect people in normal traffic. I don’t know if there was any other alternative to come to the city centre,” Aldag answered pragmatically.
“Now we have to listen to our doctors to decide what they think and what they will do.” Even Roglič's rivals in the peloton were vocal about the bad luck he has faced over the years when it comes to crashing. His former teammate, Wout van Aert, lamented the lack of signposting in the run-in to the finish.
“I feel really sorry for him, he had so much bad luck like this before already, the GC shouldn’t be decided on a stage like this,” Van Aert stated. “It was a really tricky village we passed through in the final with middle sections that were way too dangerous to be there. Only the first one was pointed out, that could have been bigger, signalled, or taken away. I feel really sorry for Primož, I hope he’s OK.”
The saying goes that bad times are needed in order for better ones to follow, and the only hope for Roglič is that good fortune is on the horizon. Whether he was ever really in the form to win the yellow jersey in this Tour with his new team or not, it’s a painful way for the Slovenian to lose his chances at fighting for the win. Roglič is proof that as much as professional bike racing is about preparation, training and marginal gains, there’s a healthy dose of fate involved too. Right now, Primož Roglič is facing the dark side of it.
