Cyclist
Opinion: What is Primož Roglič’s legacy?
The Iberian dust has settled on Primož Roglič’s fourth Vuelta a España win, which he claimed earlier this month. In sealing the maillot rojo again, Roglič has become the Vuelta’s most successful rider alongside Roberto Heras, who won the Spanish Grand Tour four times at the beginning of the 21st century. A team change, Tour fiasco and a pandemic on from the days of his first Vuelta win in 2019, Roglič is held in a much different regard today compared to five years ago.
His lack of Tour de France wins mean some now count the Slovenian as a nearly man, but his broader results speak otherwise. He’s won Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, the Volta a Catalunya, Itzulia Basque Country, Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de Romandie, an Olympic gold and a Monument. He’s ticked off almost all of cycling’s big races bar the Tour de Suisse and – crucially – the Tour.
That last fact means despite his colossal palmarès, Roglič has slipped down cycling’s pecking order. He now occupies the second tier of Grand Tour contenders, perpetually in the shadow of his younger countryman Tadej Pogačar and former teammate Jonas Vingegaard. Yet having nonetheless mostly excelled in an age alongside these once-in-a-lifetime talents, what exactly is the legacy of Roglič‘s legacy? Will he go down as one of cycling’s greats, or is he a flash in the pan?
The merchant of Vuelta
In winning the 2024 Vuelta a España, Roglič joined Heras as the most successful Vuelta GC rider in terms of victories. That’s impressive enough in its own right but throw in his 2023 Giro win, and Roglič is up to five Grand Tour victories. This beats the record of Vincenzo Nibali and puts him only two Grand Tour wins away from Alberto Contador and Chris Froome. I mean, Raymond Poulidor has become a Tour legend despite (like Roglič) never having actually won the damn race.
The image of Roglič in the red jersey has become customary over the past five years, as has his untouchable reputation on steep Vuelta finales. Yet impressive as it is today, this image seems likely to fade into obscurity in the future – Heras, after all, hardly holds the same place in the cycling zeitgeist as contemporaries such as Marco Pantani or Jan Ullrich (despite them only having two Grand Tour wins apiece compared to Heras’s four).
This likely gives us a glimpse into the Slovenian’s future standing in cycling’s hall of fame. Even though he’s been nigh-on unbeatable in the Vuelta, success in the Spanish Grand Tour doesn’t have the longevity and bestow the history-writing legacy, it seems, that other great champions bask in for decades to come.
The Tour de France dilemma
That last point neatly takes us onto the Tour de France. Between efforts in the colours of Jumbo-Visma and now Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Roglič has participated in six Tours de France. He has only finished three of them, having abandoned all three attempts since his second-place finish in 2020. In fact, when it comes to the Tour, Roglič is probably known more for his meltdown on La Planche des Belles Filles or subsequent concrete-kissing mishaps than his time spent near the top of the GC standings or his three stage wins.
Should his Tour legacy ultimately be defined by his failures, Roglič will hardly be alone. As mentioned, Poulidor never won the Tour, while Laurent Fignon has a legacy founded on his own near-miss in 1989, one that was far more spellbinding than Roglič’s wobble on La Planche. Perhaps Roglič is the Fignon of the new millennium, but the difference between them is that Fignon did manage to win the Tour – twice – before his unforgettable Champs-Elysées heartbreak.
Yes, Roglič’s time-trial win atop the Monte Lussari at the 2023 Giro helped to score some good karma and gain him a degree of redemption for his Tour failure against the clock three years before – the kind of redemption Fignon would never achieve – but that was at the Giro. The fact remains that Roglič’s impact on the Tour has been punctuated by more troughs than peaks.
That said, Roglič has had an impact on the Grand Boucle. The Slovenian helped birth the Jumbo-Visma megatron in the early 2020s, and played his part in teammate Vingegaard’s remarkable win on the Col du Granon in 2022. It’s easy to forget the pivotal role Roglič played in shaping the Dutch team’s regeneration given that it was Vingegaard who took all the glory (at the Tour, anyway).
In truth, now that Roglič has left the Visma parade, the whole thing almost feels like a more distant moment in time. Even the idea of Roglič winning another Tour stage is starting to become alien.
A victim of timing
Has Roglič’s time come and gone? Is he a victim of the wonderkid epidemic in cycling? Is he now too old to win the Tour? These are all valid questions that all relate to the current climate in pro cycling.
Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard currently have an iron fist grip on the top two places at the Tour, while Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel have taken their hand to the Classics in more emphatic fashion than the former ski jumper, who not long ago was himself considered a cycling Jack of all Trades.
Yet when you consider that Roglič’s rise came at a time when the Team Sky train was still dominating, the likes of Vincenzo Nibali was at the top of his game and Alejandro Valverde was the poster boy for the Vuelta. he’s actually had little time to stand out. And you could argue that the year when he looked his best, 2020, the pandemic squashed the season and added footnotes to some of his most impressive performances.
If Roglič was ten years older – or maybe ten years younger – he’d likely build an even sparklier palmarès than he has. Even his status as Slovenia’s cycling flagbearer has been totally eclipsed by the younger Pogačar. Where Roglič could have hoovered up another Liège-Bastogne-Liège title or an Il Lombardia trophy – at the very least – his younger colleague Pogačar has been there to spoil the party.
The cult of personality
What I found interesting when covering the Tour of Slovenia a couple of years back was how Roglič was seemingly more popular than Pogačar in their native land. This might have changed now that Pogačar has won a third Tour and started winning Classics for fun, but it was hard to avoid Roglič’s face on banking billboards and the hordes of people wearing shirts from his own clothing line. Even outside of Slovenia, I used to live above a Swapfiets that had a Roglič plastered all over the shop windows.
Even now, we get promo videos of Roglič showering in a Hansgrohe bathroom and he was snapped sipping on Red Bull as part of his new team’s pre-Tour promotional material. Regardless of his lack of Tour trophies, Roglič has become a face of cycling that reverberates much deeper than his presence on the results sheet suggests it should.
The story of how he turned from ski jumping to cycling is unique, and sets him apart from Vingegaard and Pogačar. On top of this, he has an established clothing line in Slovenia and his wife Lora has 20,000 Instagram followers, a book and a foundation set up around the Roglič family name.
He’s also become a great example of pro cycling media training. Criticised over his robotic post-race interviews at the 2019 Giro, Roglič is now a goldmine of one-liners and quips when on the mic after a big race. ‘No risk, no glory, eh?’ has become one of cycling’s few catchlines in a peloton that lacks character and personality. This too is changing, mind: Pogačar is a personality cut out of the TikTok generation, Evenepoel is known for his outspoken remarks (plus he’s a Pizza Hut brand ambassador in Belgium). Even in this respect, it’s getting harder for Roglič to stand out against the other titans of the current pro peloton.
The bigger picture
It might sound pretentious, but Roglič’s legacy might be more tied to what he represents, rather than the reality of his results. He changed the definition of what it meant to be a GC rider in the modern age, tapping into one-day racing alongside stage races and harvesting stage wins for fun. Chris Froome and Alberto Contador never won a Monument, after all, and they certainly didn’t win anywhere as near as many A-list stage races as the Slovenian. And we can’t forget that we have Roglič to thank for Jumbo-Visma’s full transition into a GC victory battery farm.
In winning the 2023 Giro, Roglič managed to grow beyond the title of ‘Vuelta merchant’, while his five Grand Tour wins overall have seen him long discard the mantle of ‘one-Tour wonder’. However, a Tour win really is necessary to place Roglič in the ring of cycling greats. If you think of the sport’s pantheon of all-time GC greats, it’s unlikely to feature anyone who didn’t win the Tour.
His chances don’t look great, however. Red Bull-Bora-Hangrohe are edging in on signing Evenepoel, it seems, as part of the German team’s ambitions to become cycling’s freshest super-team. Outside of his own team, Pogačar and Vingegaard aren’t slowing down in their quest to win more Tour titles, and are both now in their mid- to late-20s, the conventional peak for Grand Tour racing. Roglič will be 35 at the start of next year’s Tour de France.
This is Roglič we’re talking about, though. He has spent his career doing things differently to everyone else, whether it’s losing a Tour everyone thought he would win on a cataclysmic off-day on La Planche, or achieving his redemption at the Giro despite a mechanical problem that threatened to see the nightmare repeat itself. If he does come back to win the Tour, it could possibly be the most Primož Roglič thing to ever happen.
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