If it worked for Tadej Pogačar, it can work for Primož Roglič. Well, that’s what the original Slovenian superstar is banking on, anyway. After watching his compatriot win both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in 2024, Roglič, too, wants entry to the exclusive Giro-Tour club of just eight riders.
The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider, winner of the Giro in 2023, is returning to the Corsa Rosa next year before then taking on the Tour, the race that continues to evade him, each time in ever more heartbreaking ways. The thinking, the forever young 35-year-old states, is that by doing the Giro first and not placing all his Grand Tour eggs in a Tour de France-branded basket, it will dial down the pressure and expectation by the time he gets to France in mid-summer. In his words, prioritising the Giro reduces the Tour to a mere “bonus”.
Of course, that’s not quite true. The Tour is the Tour, as cyclists have a fondness of saying, and after having won the Vuelta a España four times and all but one of the big-seven one-week stage races – the Tour de Suisse, the one of the remaining seven to win, is not on his 2025 calendar – there is only really the Tour left for Roglič to tick off in GC terms.
By targeting the Giro first it signals an acceptance that just focusing on the Tour de France is no longer a win-sure approach. Though he won’t publicly admit it, he knows that with Pogačar and his former teammate Jonas Vingegaard set to be the standout favourites once again his best chances to win yellow are behind him. It’s not impossible, but he’d require something that has proved very elusive for him in the French race: good luck.
The Giro and the Vuelta, therefore, represent the best chances for him to add to his Grand Tour palmarès. “To choose the Giro, it was quite easy,” Roglič said at his team’s media day in Mallorca, Spain. “I thought after one year it would be cool, and it’s close to Slovenia again. I was always thinking that normally I finish the season with the Vuelta so it’s better to start with the first Grand Tour and then go to the Tour after was also a logical choice.”
Red Bull’s talisman then hopes that he too can do-a-Pogačar and not only maintain condition from the Giro, but improve it during the Tour. “This way I’ve never really done it before,” he said, pointing to the fact that it’ll be the first time he's targeted the double. He joked that his goal at the Tour is just to finish it, but battered away suggestions that he’d ever return to the Tour just to chase stage wins. Roglič is a serial winner – he’s only 12 wins off a century of victories – and the thought of voluntarily shipping dozens of minutes doesn’t even register as a possibility in his mind. He’ll go to the Giro to win that, and then head to the Tour seeking to win that too. And if he doesn’t, there’s always the Vuelta again, the race he doesn't always set out to do but invariably always does, almost always triumphing.
The route of the 2025 Giro will be released in full in January, but what is already known is that Roglič will face stiff competition. UAE Team Emirates have announced that Juan Ayuso and Adam Yates will co-lead their charge, while Egan Bernal, winner of the race in 2021, will head up Ineos Grenadiers’ team. It’s thought that it’s highly likely that Vingegaard will also be present, and Pogačar has similarly left the option open of defending his title. After a few years of the Giro being the least star-studded Grand Tour, that could all change in 2025.
Should Pogačar and Vingegaard line up at the Giro, Roglič will no doubt be left cursing. But neither would he be throwing in the towel. Yes he’s 35, but the former ski jumper entered the sport at a much later age, only joining the WorldTour aged 26, the age Pogačar currently is, and he talks about feeling much younger, like he’s still improving, and how he hasn’t yet reached his ceiling. His support team, too, is of A-class standard: Dani Martínez, second in the 2024 Giro, will be his super-domestique in Italy, as will Jai Hindley, the winner of the 2022 maglia rosa.
Roglič’s 2025 calendar is a break from tradition, a reset aimed at reversing his Tour fortune and also enriching his palmarès. There’s no guarantee of success in either, but at the very least it’s worth a shot. Because every other way – Tour only, or Tour-Vuelta – has only brought him heartache in his pursuit of yellow. “A nice challenge,” is how he succinctly summed up the prospect. Indeed. A fun and risky one, too. Will the Giro-Tour double club swell to nine riders?
