Cycling: Paris-Nice: Primož Roglič disappoints in the first race for Bora

The dress rehearsal went wrong. In the mountains around Nice, where the Tour de France ends in July, Primož Roglič lost four minutes to the competition. The Slovenian would like to win here in the summer. His expectations are high, as are his new Bora racing team and in public anyway. In addition, the area around Nice is the training area for the 34-year-old, who lives in nearby Monaco. The disappointment was even greater. Only 10th place was achieved at Paris-Nice after eight stages – in a race that Roglič won two years ago.

“I arrived with the mindset that I could win,” said Roglič, freshly showered, early on Sunday evening in front of the bus of his new Bora-hansgrohe team to “nd”. »But it’s my first race with the team. For me this is a completely new environment and we have to give each other time for all the processes. And, you know, it doesn’t change my life whether I win Paris-Nice,” he said.

Roglič wasn’t on the winning track all week. In the team time trial, Bora was 54 seconds behind the winning team from UAE Emirates – even though the two-time tour winner Tadej Pogačar wasn’t even there. The Visma team with the eventual overall winner Matteo Jorgenson, but without the two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard, was 16 seconds behind. Soudal Quick Step with the strong Belgian Remco Evenepoel took double the German team. In the meantime, Bora was still in the lead, but the lights at the back went out.

“I would prefer it if everyone went into the race with the mentality of wanting to win, instead of everyone saying afterwards: ‘Oh, I still have a few reserves,'” said sports director Rolf Aldag, trying to put a positive note on the unsuccessful performance to win. He expressly praised his team’s “winning mentality” and “the unconditional will to deliver great achievements” to “nd”.

This is due to the Roglič effect in the team. “Everyone here clicks their heels together and says: ‘We definitely still have two or three percent where we can do things better.’ Be it in nutrition, or simply in the set-up around it,” describes Aldag the new attitude. Team boss Ralph Denk spoke of a “new consequence” that had come with the new addition to the team: “He is someone who demands things. Not so much in terms of ideas, in terms of approach, we were really good at that too. But maybe we weren’t quite as tough in some implementations as he might have been used to from his other team.”

What was all the more astonishing was how gently Roglič himself ultimately assessed the setback in the first race for his new employer, at least to the handful of reporters on the team bus: “I didn’t win, of course, but I wasn’t one of the last either,” he said humorously.

The four minutes deficit on Sunday on the final stage can at least be explained. Roglič was frozen in temperatures of seven degrees and rain. “Then the body no longer functions,” explained Aldag. The warming jacket came to the front too late because the race stewards didn’t let the team cars through to the small groups. “No blame to the commissioners, they did it right so that no one could drive up in the slipstream of the vehicles,” said Aldag. But of course you can plan it better.

What should be more worrying for the team is that Roglič was hardly able to make an impact on other days. On the sixth stage he launched an advance that severely shook the group of favorites. But it was just a matter of preparing the attack that would decide the race. Matteo Jorgenson countered and laid the foundations for his triumph.

In doing so, he also created a novelty: no team has ever won the Tirreno-Adriatico and Paris-Nice tours, which take place in parallel, in the same year. Vingegaard was successful in Italy and Jorgenson in France. The American is also a new addition – apparently the coordination between new and proven forces in Roglič’s old team is already more advanced than in Bora.

The German racing team wanted to rule out errors in the training structure. »Primož brought his own coach with him. He trains exactly like he did with Jumbo. There was no change. The values ​​are also similar to last year at the same time,” said Dan Lorang, head of the coaching staff at Bora, to “nd”. »Of course we have to analyze this now and draw the right conclusions. We would do that too if we had won. It was his first bike race here with us, it’s a performance diagnostic in practice. And we saw that there is still a lot to do,” said Lorang, summarizing the tasks for the coming days and weeks.

How well the coach, supervisor and athlete use this time will be seen at Roglič’s next race at the latest. This is the Tour of the Basque Country from April 1st to 6th – another race that, in addition to fast legs, can be won with warm rain jackets at the right time. Roglič has already won the tour twice with his former racing team Jumbo-Visma. That is the standard of comparison.