How Primoz Roglic Learned Everything About Cycling In Just Five Years

Primoz Roglic, the leader of the Jumbo-Visma, is the big favorite of the Tour de France 2020. -

• Primoz Roglic, yellow jersey since the 9th stage, is the big favorite of this Tour de France 2020.

• The Slovenian, ski jumping champion in his youth and who turned to cycling late, has an atypical course. 

• His professional debut just five years ago was very complicated, but he learned all the intricacies of cycling at an impressive speed. 

Primoz Roglic is the thrifty kind.

In all.

The Slovenian speaks like he rides - or vice versa.

He calculates the slightest pedal stroke, settles for a few bonuses when he gives the impression of being able to knock out the Tour de France with an anvil, just because it is not yet time.

And then dispatches current affairs when it is necessary to debrief the race in front of the journalists.

The plume, the great flights on a stroke of blood, very little for him.

The leader of the Jumbo-Visma, who ended up having to take the yellow jersey last Sunday in Laruns, runs with a calculator under the helmet.

This may seem paradoxical, when we know that five years ago, he was completely ignorant of the notion of racing tactics, while he was discovering with great difficulty the professional pelotons, their codes and their micro-errors of placement which make you eat the bitumen or the wind.

In yellow but on the defensive, what is Primoz Roglic playing?

via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/dKCu5nghAX

- 20 Minutes Sport (@ 20minutesSport) September 6, 2020

The story has now been told over and over again.

A very good ski jumper (he was crowned junior team vice-champion in 2006), Roglic decided at 22 to completely branch off.

He bought a bike, ran a year with amateurs, then managed to get hired by the Continental team Adria Mobil.

Two years later, he joined Lotto-Jumbo (the old name of Jumbo-Visma), where he experienced an express rise, to the rank of big favorite of the Tour de France, at age 30.

But precisely.

Perhaps this search for total mastery comes from this very particular journey.

"When he was with us, he needed to plan everything, when he was going to take a can, when he was going to attack, everything", tells us Bogdan Fink.

Team boss Adria Mobil remembers the former jumping champion's first laps in the race.

A real disaster.

“He had no idea how it was in a peloton, at the tactical level, who the leaders were, the important riders, what was going on before a pass or a sprint,” he lists.

It was very hard.

"

"Primoz is someone who freelances very quickly, he never makes the same mistake twice"

At almost every race, the novice finds himself on the ground.

“The major difficulty was learning to ride in a peloton,” he explained last year.

So he wanted to swallow everything, very quickly.

His experienced teammates, Matej Mugerli (former Liquigas rider), Marco Kump (passed through Saxo-Tinkoff or Lampre) and Radoslav Rogina, teach him life.

"He is an attentive person, very attentive and above all who makes his head walk", says the first, always delighted to mention his eminent apprentice.

Roglic crashes, a lot.

But he's progressing at least as much.

"Primoz is someone who freelances very quickly," explains Fink.

He never makes the same mistake twice.

He learned day after day, race after race ”.

The manager is particularly keeping in mind the lap of Al Zubarah, in Qatar (where the wind is the only interest of the race, run on long straights in the desert), during the Slovenian's first season.

“On the first stage, he finished with the last group.

He puts down his bike and says "cycling is not for me, it's too difficult".

We talked to him, explained what was going on with the wind, all that.

The next day, he finished in the penultimate group, and on the last stage, finally with the peloton.

For me, it was a sign that he could do it.

"

Final prep for my 1st UCI 2.2 Tour of Al Zubarah @NFTO @NFTOProCycling #qatar #flat #brutalheadwinds pic.twitter.com/Hk0lVX0DVO

- Mat Wilson (@Prof_MatWilson) November 28, 2014

It's not necessarily obvious when you watch the Tour de France from time to time with a distracted eye, but knowing how to pedal hard isn't enough to stay in a peloton.

You have to know how to position yourself, climb back up or let yourself be unhooked without making a strike with your little comrades, understanding how to avoid the traps represented by roundabouts or medians, approached at very high speed.

All this is learned little by little, from the categories of young people.

But when you land in there at 25, it's necessarily more complicated.

To better understand, we asked Pascal Hervé.

Richard Virenque's former right-hand man at Festina did not turn pro until he was 30 years old.

He had run a bit among the youngsters, before taking a long break and then coming back, first to the amateurs, at 25 years old.

“You learn on the job.

It is by being inside, by observing everything that is going on, how the best behave, that you learn.

And then year after year, you gain experience, ”he describes from Montreal, where he is now based.

A profile too risky for some, not for others

Thirty-third overall in his first Tour in 1994, Hervé was also able to count on guardian angels, in this case Jean-Paul van Poppel and Michel Vermote.

“My first year with them was a great cycling university,” he laughs.

But as good as the instructors are, what makes the difference then cannot be explained.

He pursues :

"Race intelligence, you have it or not."

Feel the moment when it's going to be the right shot, the right breakaway… Some people almost always manage to take it, others will try 25 times and it's always the 26th that starts.

Reading the race is you, all alone, with what you observed.

"

Primoz Roglic, who from his arrival at the Jumbo had given himself five years to win the Tour de France - "he said that very seriously, in a very calm way, it was the fruit of intense reflection," said in start of Tour Frans Maassen, one of the Dutch team's sports directors, at

- is apparently part of the good caste.

“He comes from high level sport, he was among the best, so he certainly has an adaptability that many do not have, even people who have been cycling for a long time, observes Pascal Hervé.

His vision of the race is excellent, he always rides in front, on the right wheel, he has the right pedal stroke.

"

The managers of the Lotto-Jumbo, Maassen in the lead, were not mistaken, in 2015, when they had the opportunity to engage the Slovenian.

Not all have had a hollow nose, as Jean-François Bourlart, director of Circus-Wanty Gobert, admitted last week.

“I didn't even take the time to think about it.

I said that it did not interest us, he admitted at the microphone of the RTBF.

It was too risky, especially if the kid had no past on the road.

I told myself that it would be difficult to make him a cyclist.

"

June 21st 2015: Primoz Roglic wins GC of Tour of Slovenia as an 25-year old unknown rider from Adria Mobil (Mikel Nieve was 2nd)

June 21st 2020: @rogla wins his first national road championships in Slovenia, as one of the world's best riders.

And the best is yet to come.

pic.twitter.com/nKKHEuusza

- Jonas Creteur (@jonas_creteur) June 21, 2020

La Bora was very interested, on the other hand, but did not belong to the World Tour category at the time.

Unacceptable for the ambitious Roglic.

It is therefore within the big Dutch machine that he perfects his learning.

From his first Grand Tour, on the 2016 Giro, he won a stage, a 40-mil time trial.

“I had no technique.

At least in qualifying, I could choose my trajectories, ”he said in March 2019. He is improving, climbing the ranks.

Each of them pays to learn.

The latest are no exception.

During the Tour de France 2018, he let slip a place on the podium by completely missing out on the last stopwatch, the day before the Champs, while he is a great specialist in exercise (he had lost more than a minute on Froome in the space of 31 km).

The following year, he was one of the favorites of the Tour of Italy, of which he wore the pink leader's jersey at the start of the race.

But he still stalls in the third week and simply saves his third place narrowly.

The consecration will come on the Tour of Spain, where he becomes the first Slovenian to win a three-week race.

Learning, again.

“He is one of the strongest runners I have seen, but above all, I have never met someone with such mental strength, greeted Matej Mugerli.

It is, in my opinion, his most formidable weapon.

"

Plans that go (often) without a hitch

To his well-made brain is added another factor, positive for his late arrival in the peloton: freshness.

This is what Pascal Hervé thinks.

“Cycling is an extremely demanding sport, which requires sacrifices.

When you've been doing this since the age of 14-15, you can relax a bit when you turn pro because you think you've reached your goal.

While at 25-26, you're both more mature and fresher, explains the ex-Festina.

You are ready to endure all these efforts, and in addition you know yourself better, you know how much you can suffer.

For a runner it is essential.

"

We saw it in Orcières and in the Pyrenees, Roglic seems to have a very precise idea of ​​what he can do, and where he should trigger.

"He always has a plan and knows how to make it work," summarizes his former mentor Bogdan.

In the Jura, Sunday, then the Alps, next week, there is no reason for that to change.

The stages have been identified for a long time.

Five years after his debut, exactly as he had imagined, today is the former ski jumper in position to win the Tour de France.

A quirk that is, in fact, nothing abnormal.

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