THE SUPREMELY RELAXED ONE

To serial stage race winner Primož Roglič, cycling is just a game. Chris Marshall-Bell gets inside the mind of the Slovenian to find out why he’s so good at it

On board JumboVisma’s bus on the morning of a decisive mountain stage in a Grand Tour – one which will decide the final destination of the leader’s jersey – there are riders kicking their feet, fidgeting. Some have butterflies in their stomach, apprehensive about the parcours ahead of them. The nerves are tangible.

“When we are doing the meeting, everybody starts sweating a little bit about the nervous moments that will come in the race,” says Dutchman Robert Gesink. That is everybody but the team’s leader, Primož Roglič.

Game plan

Despite all the focus and expectation being on him, Roglič – a three-time Vuelta a España winner and favourite for this month’s Giro d’Italia – is a picture of serenity, of calm. “We’re all like that and he’s just sat in his seat going, ‘Phwoar, let’s just have fun boys.’ It seems like a game to him,” Gesink says.

“The most surprising thing about Primož is that he’s always so relaxed about everything. Obviously he has a lot of things to worry about, but somehow he goes into races and says, ‘OK, boys, let’s make it a nice game today,’ and he shows no stress. With his reputation and palmarès, I guess he can be relaxed, and he has found a good way to release the pressure and see cycling as a fun thing to do.”

Roglič is one part of the Slovenian rulers who have come to dominate stage races in men’s cycling since 2019. While his younger compatriot Tadej Pogačar famously performed a penultimate stage steal to snatch the Tour de France from him in 2020, the older of the duo has racked up more Grand Tour successes, with three red jerseys from the Vuelta hanging up at home.