New role, same ambition for Primoz Roglic at revamped Red Bull

Primož Roglič used to be the future once. When the Slovenian joined Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in the winter of 2023, he was signed expressly to lead the team’s Tour de France challenge. 

Two years on, Roglič finds himself eased aside in favour of new arrival Remco Evenepoel and emerging talent Florian Lipowitz. Amid the hubbub over the Evenepoel signing this summer, there were even murmurs that Red Bull might dispense with Roglič’s services altogether.

Instead, Roglič remains in situ for the final year of his contract, but his status in the team has been adjusted accordingly. Evenepoel and Lipowitz are now the star men, and they will lead at the Tour, while Giulio Pellizzari and Jai Hindley have been given their head at the Giro d’Italia.

Not for the first time in his career, Roglič will have to settle for the consolation prize of leading at the Vuelta a España, where he will seek the outright record of five overall victories. 

His previous four wins all came as shows of defiance after disappointments in Grand Tours earlier in the summer. This time out is a little different. In 2026, the Vuelta is the only game in town for Roglič, who was omitted from the Tour team by Ralph Denk and new head of sports Zak Dempster.

Roglič was still processing that news when he met with reporters at the Red Bull media day in Mallorca last week, but he wore his disappointment likely. In truth, he must already have suspected that the Tour would not be on his agenda amid the new regime at Red Bull.

The marquee signing Evenepoel was always likely to lead, while Roglič’s ambitious but erratic attacks as Lipowitz defended a podium spot in the final days of the 2025 Tour were perhaps an indication that he was simply not suited to a supporting role at a Grand Tour.

Roglič couldn’t pretend that he was in any way glad to miss out on the Tour, but he had no public complaint about the decision either. He spoke with the quiet acceptance of a man resigned to his current position in the firmament at Red Bull.

“If I could sign to win one race, it would be the Tour de France. I mean, that’s not a secret, but the reality is different,” said Roglič, who noted that plans drawn up in December don’t always survive contact with the variables that inevitably tumble into a rider’s path over the course of the season.

“I mean, if there’s something I learned with all these years, it’s that there are always some chances. But you need to put something in the plan, because obviously there’s a lot of people around and we cannot just be all freelancers.”

Even so, Roglič finds himself in a similar position to Mark Cavendish when he joined QuickStep in 2021. His path to the Tour is entirely contingent on disruption to the plans of the anointed leader for July. And, with both Lipowitz and Evenepoel targeting the Tour, it would require a remarkable sequence of events for Roglič to force himself into the reckoning.

The initial temptation was to view Roglič’s race programme as a demotion, but Red Bull have handled his case with considerable care. Rather than abruptly relegate Roglič to the role of super domestique in Evenepoel’s retinue, Dempster has opted to move the veteran sideways. He remains a leader, just not at the race he covets above all others.

Indeed, as things stand, Roglič will not race alongside Evenepoel all year. Instead, he will lead the team in a series of important races that are not on the Belgian’s programme, starting with Tirreno-Adriatico and Itzulia Basque Country. He is also expected to line out at the Tour de Romandie, and he’ll get a leadership role in a June stage race to boot.

That schedule will give Roglič a chance to get back to winning races, something he has struggled to do with the same regularity since leaving Jumbo-Visma at the end of 2023. At the Dutch team, Roglič routinely hoovered up overall victory in week-long stage races by remorselessly picking off time bonuses on summit finish – ‘Roglification,’ in the words of journalist Daniel Friebe.

In his final season at Jumbo-Visma, for instance, Roglič won Tirreno-Adriatico and the Volta a Catalunya before winning the Giro, and he added the Vuelta a Burgos before taking third at the Vuelta a España. 

By contrast, Roglič started his first two seasons at Red Bull relatively slowly. In 2023, he didn’t win a stage race until the Dauphiné in June, and even then, he was almost beaten by his old teammate Matteo Jorgenson. Last year, his lone victories came on the Volta a Catalunya. In 2026, without a Tour de France to target, Roglič will hope to win early and often.

“It’s just the thing that probably all the winners, they have it inside,” Roglič said. “It’s hard to say that you are born with it, but somehow you grew up and you have it. I mean, when you are, I don’t know, ten years old or whatever, you have the competitiveness and the drive and all these things. And it’s still inside, you know. You wake up and you want to do everything to be the best. It’s nice.”

We’re increasingly told that cycling is a young man’s game, and Roglič turned 36 in October. His advancing years and Evenepoel’s arrival heightened speculation that the final year of Roglič’s Red Bull contract might also be the final season of his pro career. In Mallorca last week, Roglič smilingly batted away the idea.

“I hope not. I mean, I want to race this moment for 10 more years. As long as I feel that hunger and it makes me happy, I have to be happy, and I have to enjoy it,” he said, joking at how he listened for his name at the start of the media day when Denk announced a series of contract extensions. “I was listening and I was maybe hoping a bit, but he didn’t say my name, eh…”

It’s hard to fathom it now, but when Roglič entered the WorldTour decade ago, he was viewed as a cold and taciturn figure. He kept his head down in press conferences and kept his answers to the bare minimum. 

During the 2019 Giro, a race he looked like winning after dominating the opening week time trials, a local journalist grew frustrated during yet another monosyllabic press conference. “Why are you so serious?” he asked. Roglič, to his credit, cracked a smile at that.

It would take a harrowing defeat at the following year’s Tour de France to crack the façade sufficiently to allow Roglič’s true personality to shine through. Nothing transfigures a rider like defeat, and nothing summed up Roglič’s dignity in disappointment like the hug he gave his compatriot Tadej Pogačar after losing the yellow jersey in the most distressing of circumstances at La Planche des Belles Filles. 

In that evening’s press conference, Roglič could even indulge in some gallows humour when asked his thoughts on the new helmet he had worn for the fateful time trial. “Obviously not so good, eh,” he quipped softly.

In the years that followed, Roglič would become an increasingly playful and occasionally philosophical interviewee. Each year seemed to bring fresh heartbreak in July at the Tour and another comeback in September at the Vuelta. His fans grew in legion with each passing season, even when the young men in a hurry – Pogačar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel – began to move beyond him.

In Mallorca last week, Roglič played his part to perfection when he sat before the world’s media, accepting his fate in the current iteration of Red Bull with philosophy and good grace. Still, acceptance is not the same as resignation. The Vuelta might be the race he has been assigned for 2026, but Roglič politely disagreed with the suggestion that his interplay with fans on Montmartre last July had been the ideal way to say goodbye to the Tour de France.

“Well, you could have also nicer pictures with me winning down there or something, no?” Roglič said. 

The role has changed but the ambition remains.