“Allons-y!” Primož Roglič grins to a room full of journalists as he takes to the stage for his routine pre-race press conference ahead of the Tour de France. “Let’s go!” is the translation. It gets a ripple of laughter from the room and Roglič sniggers back, pleased with himself. The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider lounges back in his chair, looks around at the grand gold interior of the neo-classical building of the Opéra de Lille where the meeting is taking place and passes the microphone playfully between his hands. It is two days before the biggest bike race in the world, and Primož Roglič has never, ever seemed more relaxed.
“Of course, I don’t need to point it out really,” he shrugs when asked about his general classification ambitions for the race. “The way Tadej is riding, Jonas is riding, Remco, there are strong young guys. Lipo [Florian Lipowitz] was third in the Dauphiné. Myself? I don’t really care that much, we all know the Tour de France is unfinished business but winning it or not winning it will not turn my life around. I’m 36-years-old. Proud and happy to come and be a part of this race still. I’m enjoying it.”
From a man known to give answers scarcely more expansive than a few words, or even syllables in interviews, this long, considered response comes as a welcome surprise. The reality is that Roglič has changed: maybe it’s the tortured road to this point which has been marred with crashes and injury, or maybe it is age and reflection, but this rider at the start of the 2025 Tour is not the same as we have seen in years gone by.
The inevitable questions come about the likelihood of him crashing out on the hectic stages in the opening week of this year’s Tour. Roglič is known for his dire luck – he’s lost out on big victories countless times due to innocuous mishaps that seem to haunt him in whichever race he starts. Once, Roglič might have been worried about the frantic peloton, small roads and sprint finishes in the opening week of the Tour ruining his general classification bid, but this year is different.
“If I’m honest I didn’t even check the stages that much,” he laughs. “We’ll probably have a meeting tomorrow because Saturday is the race. You just have to survive, I’m a good example of that! In the Tour you need to get through these days to even get to the final.”
Perhaps Roglič’s impressively laid-back demeanour comes from the fact that at this point, he feels as if he has got nothing to lose: “When something happens, it doesn’t really matter, you just have to learn from it. I try to learn from every situation. Without the bad you don’t know what the good things are. Getting older, you learn some things. You try to look at things in a way that actually helps you. It’s helping to be relaxed. I have nothing to prove to anyone and I just want to come to Paris and have a glass of champagne.”
The likes of Lipowitz and Aleksandr Vlasov alongside him as part of Red Bull’s somewhat mismatched Tour roster means that, according to Roglič, the pressure is off in the mountains. His team haven’t outright stated that they will be fully backing the 36-year-old for the yellow jersey and they have brought a mix of sprinters, puncheurs and climbers who will go for stage wins which validate that claim. While the team selection met some discourse when it came out due to the lack of mountain support for Roglič, the Slovenian says he has taken no notice of the noise around him.
“It is my story and everyone is writing their own. I’m the main actor, I try to do my best. I am not the youngest here any more and it’s a privilege to still ride with those young guys,” he comments.
“Whether I win or not, it is what it is. My family, myself, it will all be the same either way. I have tried to do everything and be here as good as possible but we’ll figure out how good that is soon. In the end, every athlete has the mindset to be the best, but sooner or later it isn’t about just victories. From my personal career, I don’t remember a lot of victories but the hard times? I remember a lot of them.”
So the pressure, it seems, is off the shoulders of Primož Roglič. Can we say he has given up on the career-long dream of a yellow jersey? Is this him being gracious in defeat up against the seismic talent of a rider like Pogačar? Or is this, in fact, going to be the key to unexpected success for the Red Bull rider? Could it be that what he has needed all along – in order to avoid the accidents and drama – is no expectation on his performance at all? This Tour de France is putting a new version of Roglič to the test. Whether he passes, is yet to be determined.
