Primož Roglič will travel to the Solden ski resort in Austria with his new Bora-Hansgrohe teammates this week to begin a new chapter in his career and plan his assault at the 2024 Tour de France.
Roglič spoke at length about his life and 2023 Giro d’Italia success at the Festival dello Sport in Italy at the weekend. Afterwards, he talked more specifically to Cyclingnews and La Gazzetta dello Sport about his move from Jumbo-Visma to Bora-Hansgrohe and his ambitions for 2024.
“I like new challenges and to have different things. Sometimes new things are better but you don’t know until you do it,” Roglič said, carefully choosing his words.
“I’m leaving the best team of the year, so I don’t expect I’ll go to an even better team. We’ll see what the future brings.”
Roglič has already revealed that he began to think about a move away from Jumbo-Visma at the start of 2023. His victory at the Giro d’Italia left just the Tour de France missing from his palmares but with Jonas Vingegaard a two-time winner for Jumbo-Visma, Roglič realised he had to change teams if he wanted to target the Tour de France in the final years of his career.
When Jumbo-Visma began to work on the merger/takeover of Soudal-QuickStep during the later summer, Remco Evenepoel was expected to become a team leader and Jumbo-Visma decided to let Roglič leave.
Around the same time, the leadership rivalry emerged within the team at the Vuelta a España, with Roglič explaining that his responsibility as a team leader is to win races. He said in Trento that he could have attacked to overturn the result but was ultimately happy that Sepp Kuss won.
Bora-Hansgrohe team manager Ralph Denk realised during the Vuelta a España that Roglič was no longer happy at Jumbo-Visma and formulated an offer, keen to secure Roglič’s services.
Ineos Grenadiers and Lidl-Trek were also named as possible destinations but Bora-Hansgrohe quickly emerged as the best option for Roglič. The German team used some carefully saved budget to fund the deal, with Jumbo-Visma receiving a reported three million Euro to terminate Roglič’s existing contract. He will reportedly earn 5.5 million Euros per season at Bora-Hansgrohe in 2024 and 2025.
“It went quite fast in the end,” Roglič explained of his transfer to Bora-Hansgrohe.
“Of course, many teams were interested but perhaps not many of them could really do it. When we started talking with Bora-Hansgrohe, things went…
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