The Slovenian from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, one of the favorites of the Tour de France, left the race on the morning of the 13th stage this Friday, July 12 after falling the day before. His third withdrawal in four years on the Grande Boucle.
His appearance at the finish line on Thursday in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, with a defeated expression and a raw right shoulder, was a bad omen. It was confirmed: Primoz Roglic, one of the favorites of the Tour de France, threw in the towel on Friday July 12, in the morning of the 13th stage after falling the day before. “After a detailed examination by our medical team yesterday evening and again this morning, the decision was made that Primoz Roglic would not start today,” announced his team, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. At the start of the Grande Boucle in Florence, the Slovenian looked like a potential troublemaker in the expected match between Pogacar and Vingegaard for the overall victory and, in any case, a serious candidate for a podium in Nice.
He was thus in fourth place in the general classification on Thursday when fate struck him. About ten kilometres from the finish of a so-called transition stage, with little at stake a priori, the Kazakh Alexey Lutsenko hit a traffic island in the middle of the road, falling right in front of him. Primoz Roglic could not do much to avoid him and went over his own bike, falling heavily to the ground. Although he set off again, the Slovenian arrived with a bleeding shoulder and 2 minutes 27 seconds behind his competitors. Two places lost in the classification and, no doubt already, the certainty that the Tour was over for him.
Bad luck and lack of skill
“I’m really sad to see Primoz fall. I know he arrived very prepared, and I expected to see him fly in the last week,” reacted the wearer of the yellow jersey, his compatriot Tadej Pogacar. “The general classification should not be decided on a stage like that,” estimated the Belgian Wout Van Aert, his former teammate at Jumbo-Visma, who believes that the dangers of the road have not been well enough indicated since the start of the Tour de France. “I’m sorry for Roglic, he had already had so much bad luck before,” he continued to lament.
To say the least: Primoz Roglic, who had already fallen on Wednesday, is used to crashing in races. If only in the Tour de France, he was forced to abandon in 2021 after falling heavily in Brittany, then in 2022 after falling on the cobblestones of the North. He was also at the top of our ranking of the top cyclists who had fallen the most between 2019 and 2021, with 7 falls recorded.
Sometimes it’s pure bad luck, sometimes he pays for his lack of skill on the bike. The three-time winner of the Vuelta a España and winner of the Giro d’Italia only arrived from the World Tour peloton at the age of 27, a late arrival after an initial career as a ski jumper.
