Primoz Roglic hasn’t analyzed Tour de France route yet: "Was on antibiotics after Giro due to bacterial infection"

Roglic had focused his 2025 season on the Giro and the Tour but was ultimately unable to finish the Italian race after a series of crashes. The only thing we have heard from him since then is that he is preparing for the Tour in Tignes. Otherwise, we had to rely on the words of sports director Rolf Aldag, who stated that Roglic was doing well.

In the opera house in Lille, Roglic, who has Dutchmen Danny van Poppel and Mick van Dijke at his side at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, was finally able to explain his current situation himself. However, with Roglic, you always have to take that with a pinch of salt, as he was only too happy to throw out some of his famous one-liners.

A question about the hectic first few days, which have already cost him several withdrawals from grand tours, was skillfully deflected. “To be honest, I haven't analyzed the route yet. We have a meeting tomorrow, and the race is on Saturday. You have to survive, as you do every year. I want to compete for the win; that's where the race is decided.”

"I am happy and proud to be still able to compete in the Tour, the biggest cycling event in the world. We'll take it day by day,“ said Roglic, who hasn't had the best experiences in recent years. ”The crashes have had an impact, but they weren't directly my fault. It's important how you deal with them. You don't learn much when you win. It's in the bad moments that you learn: without the bad moments, you don't even know what the good ones look like."

“I'm also getting older, so you learn a few things. It helps me to look at the facts: I'm up against Tadej, who is riding at his level. After the Giro, I was on antibiotics, also because of a bacterial infection. I've recovered, and now we have another race to show what we're worth.”

Roglic mentioned it himself: he will have to compete against Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Remco Evenepoel, among others. “Of course, I can't just compete against them. The way those three men ride... but we also have strong young riders, such as Florian Lipowitz, who finished third in the Dauphiné. And Jordi Meeus, who has already shown that he is in very good shape. That way, we can try to get results early in the race, which is great.”

“About myself: I don't really care,” Roglic said in response to the question about his ambitions. “I know which races I've won and which ones I haven't, but at the end of the day, at 36 years old, it's not going to turn my life upside down.”

“Everyone starts from scratch, so everything we say is hypothetical. We're all going to fight for the same seconds, and we can't do more than our best. It's already a privilege to participate, and if the best possible result is tenth place, then tenth place is the best possible result,” the Slovenian concluded.