SLOVENE STAR
READY TO SOAR
Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic was a relative unknown when he joined the WorldTour a few
years ago. After his fourth place finish at last year’s Tour de France, the former ski
jumping champion is now among the favourites for overall victory. B Y Q U E N T I N F I N N É
rimoz Roglic won
stage 19 of last
year’s Tour after
making a daring
escape on the descent
into Laruns, showing an
uncanny ability to always
choose the right line. But
going downhill – fast – is
just what the Slovenian was
good at. “I’ve hurtled down
them a lot faster than that,”
he commented when people
exclaimed at his impressive
handling down the Col
d’Aubisque.
Indeed, seven years earlier,
Jumbo-Visma’s Slovenian
leader was still competing
as a ski jumper. There’s a
real passion for the sport
in his home country and
he learned to negotiate the
slopes at an early age. Gifted
and determined, young
Roglic was soon selected for
the national junior squad. At
age 16, he was in the four-
man Slovenia team that took
bronze medals at the junior
world championship in
2006. A year later, on home
slopes, they won gold.
But soon after becoming
a world junior champion,
Roglic took part in a ski
flying contest at the national
Nordic centre in Planica.
On the massively long
and high ski jump, the
17-year-old mistimed his
leap, spun in the air and
landed headfirst on the
icy track. Unconscious, he
was airlifted to the hospital.
“Occasionally, I was a bit
too sure of myself when
I was about to jump and
thought that I could achieve
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52 | TO U R
D E F R A NC E 2019
anything,” he recalls. “I was
only very vaguely aware of
the extent of the danger.
That day, I came out of it
fairly well as I ended up with
just a fractured nose and a
severe concussion.”
That accident didn’t
immediately halt the
ambitions of the young
man from Trbovlje. He kept
on jumping until 2011,
when he realised he would
never break into the small
group at the very top of
the ski jumping hierarchy
– and decided to switch
sports. “I’m a winner who
isn’t satisfied with getting
average results,” he says.
He bought his first road
bike in 2012 and tried
cycling. “I managed pretty
well on the climbs and an
acquaintance enabled me to
join the Slovenian continental
Adria Mobil team in 2013.”
He won the Tour of
Azerbaijan the following year,
where he caught the eye of
Frans Maassen, directeur
sportif at the Dutch team
then known as LottoNL-
Jumbo. “We’d heard about
him from several contacts,
but his CV perplexed me,”
recalls Maasen. “He didn’t
have any real experience. But
we didn’t have much money
in our pockets with which
to develop our nucleus of
riders for the 2015 season
and I thought to myself
that we didn’t have much
to lose. We made him do
some physiological tests and
when we saw the results,
we were quick to sign him
up. His performances were
exceptional.”
Roglic went on to win the
Tours of the Basque Country,
Romandie and Slovenia last
season, and started the 2018
Tour with the sole ambition
of winning a stage, like he did
in 2017. He did – and was
also fourth on the Champs-
Élysées, losing his podium
place to Chris Froome just
the day before the finish. It’s
no overstatement to say the
Slovene was the revelation
of the 2018 Tour, and he
has dreams of going higher
still. With one of the Tour’s
best teams behind him, he
certainly could be in line for a
podium spot this year. ●
Roglic celebrates
victory in Laruns in
2018, his second Tour
stage win after a first
in the Alps in 2017.