“Allons-y!” Primož Roglič grins to a room full of journalists as he takes to the stage for his routine pre-race press conference ahead of the Tour de France. “Let’s go!” is the translation. It gets a ripple of laughter from the room and Roglič sniggers back, pleased with himself. The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider lounges back in his chair, looks around at the grand gold interior of the neo-classical building of the Opéra de Lille where the meeting is taking place and passes the microphone playfully between his hands. It is two days before the biggest bike race in the world, and Primož Roglič has never, ever seemed more relaxed.
“Of course, I don’t need to point it out really,” he shrugs when asked about his general classification ambitions for the race. “The way Tadej is riding, Jonas is riding, Remco, there are strong young guys. Lipo [Florian Lipowitz] was third in the Dauphiné. Myself? I don’t really care that much, we all know the Tour de France is unfinished business but winning it or not winning it will not turn my life around. I’m 36-years-old. Proud and happy to come and be a part of this race still. I’m enjoying it.”
From a man known to give answers scarcely more expansive than a few words, or even syllables in interviews, this long, considered response comes as a welcome surprise. The reality is that Roglič has changed: maybe it’s the tortured road to this point which has been marred with crashes and injury, or maybe it is age and reflection, but this rider at the start of the 2025 Tour is not the same as we have seen in years gone by.
The inevitable questions come about the likelihood of him crashing out on the hectic stages in the opening week of this year’s Tour. Roglič is known for his dire luck – he’s lost out on big victories countless times due to innocuous mishaps that seem to haunt him in whichever race he starts. Once, Roglič might have been worried about the frantic peloton, small roads and sprint finishes in the opening week of the Tour ruining his general classification bid, but this year is different.
“If I’m honest I didn’t even check the stages that much,” he laughs. “We’ll probably have a meeting tomorrow because Saturday is the race. You just have to survive, I’m a good example of that! In the Tour you need to get through these days to even get to the final.”
Perhaps Roglič’s impressively laid-back demeanour comes from the fact that at…