The fastest were long gone and the winner celebrated at the end. The rest trickled in little by little too. The spectators behind the barriers were still waving their flags in the wind. Everyone who passed was celebrated, as is usual in the Tour de France. This was also the case on the twelfth stage in the beautiful town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, which had once again reached the end of the Tour stage.
All the drivers went through, but the spectators saw on the video wall that there was an accident twelve kilometers from the end. One of them fell and took several colleagues with him. When the entire team of the German racing team Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe gathered the curve like a late train, it was clear: their captain, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, who wanted to be one of the best favorites for the complete victory. also hit. That dream ended when his team took him to the finish line. A special type of injury transport, only the blue lights were missing.
The next morning it was clear that Roglic could not continue. It was clear that the four-way battle expected by the Slovenian and his team was a three-way battle between Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel. For the German team, which was looking to break new ground with the signing of the Slovenian, into the circle of teams with ambitions of winning the whole tour, the captain’s accident – it was the second in two days – was a heavy blow. .
Everything was focused on Roglic, and now all the beautiful, expensive plans have been left in shambles. “A terrible day,” said sporting director Rolf Aldag: “We had big ambitions and now Primoz has fallen two days in a row. The first fall could have been laughed at, the second was worse.” Roglic had fallen on the right side of his body, and a torn jersey in the shoulder was not good from the start. On Friday, the doctors pulled the emergency brake.
“The sport takes a back seat,” said Aldag: “It’s now about Primoz, about his health and about him as a person. He invested so much. Now we have to take care of him. . That was when he almost won the tour de France. At least that’s what everyone believed.
A terrible day for Roglic.
The second stage of the 107th Tour was an individual time trial in the Vosges over 36.2 kilometers and finished on the Planche des Belles Filles. Roglic was ahead of Pogacar in the overall standings. Just the time trial, then on to the triumphant trip to Paris. But things turned out differently. It was a terrible day for Roglic. Pogacar, who was 21 years old at the time, drove away as he was released. Roglic, who had a lead of 59 seconds over the previous 3,362 kilometers across France, lost 1:56 minutes over those 36.2 kilometers. A mystery. A disaster. “Our world fell apart,” says Roglic’s colleague at Jumbo-Visma, Wout van Aert.
When van Aert was trying to comfort his colleague at the end, he looked into an abyss. “He didn’t respond. It was a long way away.”
The Dutch author Nando Boers has just published a book (The Plan, Covadonga Verlag), for which he was with the Jumbo-Visma team for three years. He describes the team’s 150 kilometer bus journey from the Vosges to the hotel in Troyes after Roglic’s victory as a funeral procession. Book of Souls by Iron Maiden was playing over the speakers.
“A life full of wealth and riches
It cannot last for eternity
Having lived in a golden paradise
The ultimate sacrifice.”
(“A life full of wealth and riches
Can’t live forever
After all in the Golden Paradise
“The Last Sacrifice”)
Months later, when he was able to talk to Boers about that day for the first time, Roglic said: “I was in shock. I tried to understand how this could happen. I wanted to understand how it was possible that nobody saw something like this coming.”
Roglic has won a lot in his career: the Tour of Spain three times, the Giro d’Italia, Paris-Nice and many others. His biggest dream was not fulfilled. He has already been eliminated from the tour in 2021 and 2022 after falling. The young Vingegaard had already taken over the Jumbo-Visma captaincy from him. The contempt for an assistant also hit him hard. After all, he’s what made the team great in the eight years since signing him and raised it to a new level. Things got even worse.
At the Tour of Spain last year, at the behest of the team management, Roglic had to give the victory to another assistant, the American Sepp Kuss, a good rider, but not in the league. Roglic, who is now 34 years old, knew it was time to change teams. Bora-hansgrohe, still without Red Bull, took action. The Straubingers guaranteed Roglic the captaincy and the use of all the resources and assistants available for the Tour de France. Roglic worked like a berserker. This was his chance. Probably his last.
There is nothing left to laugh about
Roglic is a hard worker. An introverted man who does many things alone. He only became a cyclist at the age of 22, having ended his career as a ski jumper after a fall. Nando Boras tells how Roglic brought a ski jumping ritual to Jumbo that everyone on the team loved. In training camps and elsewhere, he got up before sunrise, went out into nature, stretched, moved or walked – in any weather, in the dark. This gives him awareness, gives him space and inner peace. He trained the rest of the day.
No one has shown more commitment, more enthusiasm for work, more dogs. Everything for the trip. Anything to remove the trauma from burying your head there on 19 September 2020. And now: eleven steps within Pogacar and Vingegaard. Then the fall, the crash. And the certainty: there is nothing left to laugh about.