Primoz Roglic and the Vuelta: Records, redemption and reinvention

Roglič still had it all to prove when he lined up at the start of his debut Vuelta in Torrevieja seven years ago. Though already in his fourth season as a pro, Roglič was still viewed somewhat derisively as an ex-ski jumper, and doubts about his pedigree were laced into critiques of his Giro d’Italia showing. 

He had been the strongest rider in the race across the first two weeks in Italy, but his Jumbo-Visma team somehow thought it tactically wise to allow Richard Carapaz to take pink off him in the Alps, reasoning that Vincenzo Nibali was his only real rival. Carapaz held tough in the third week, while an ill Roglič slumped to third and was forced back to the drawing board.

After a very solid opening week at the Vuelta, Roglič roared into the red jersey with a crushing victory in the Pau time trial on stage 10. He then hammered home the advantage over Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana with a commanding display at Los Machucos, where he ceded stage victory to a young compatriot called Tadej Pogačar. 

At that point, the Vuelta looked like a procession for Roglič, though he would endure a scare in the final week when he was caught out in crosswinds on the rapid stage to Guadalajara. He was also on the back foot when Movistar attacked following a crash on stage 19, but he came through a dicey situation with characteristic calm. While Miguel Ángel López had been scathing in his assessment of Movistar’s ethics, Roglič shrugged off all entreaties to join the pile-on, much to the bafflement of a press room weaned on more outspoken champions.

Two days later, Roglič rode into Madrid as a Grand Tour champion and no longer simply a curio that had drifted in from the world of winter sport. Indeed, to most observers, he now looked the man most likely to end Ineos’ longstanding hegemony at the Tour de France. 

Roglič and Jumbo-Visma did more than anyone to break Ineos’ stranglehold on the Tour, but the big prize still eluded them. After spending three weeks diligently winning the Tour on points, Roglič was sent sprawling to the canvas by Pogačar’s late haymaker at La Planche des Belles Filles. 

It was the most traumatic Tour defeat since Laurent Fignon lost yellow on the Champs-Élysées in 1989, but Roglič responded to that anguish in his usual, even-handed manner. He wore his distress lightly in his first post-Tour media appearance, a somewhat surreal video conference with his Slovenian teammate Pogačar ahead of the Imola World Championships, and he then set about salvaging what he could from the pandemic-condensed season. 

After winning a most bizarre edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège in early October, Roglič set coordinates for another tilt at the Vuelta, this year reduced to 18 stages after the planned Dutch start was ruled out by the COVID-19 lockdown.

Roglič duly won the opening stage at Arrate, though he would lose the red jersey and a chunk of time at Formigal on stage 6, with his old nemesis Carapaz quickly emerging as his rival in a tight contest. 

Stage wins at Moncavillo and Suances brought Roglič back into red in the second week, though he lost the tunic again when Carapaz put 10 seconds into him on the Angliru. A dominant showing in the Mirador de Ézaro put Roglič firmly back on course, and he entered the final weekend with a lead of 45 seconds over Carapaz. More than enough, surely.

Not quite. For a dizzying few minutes, the Alto de la Covatilla looked to be producing a replica of La Planche des Belles Filles. A flagging Roglič had no response when Carapaz attacked with intent 3.5km from the top, and the Ecuadorian had already clawed back 25 seconds by the time he reached the final 2km.

With no teammates left, Roglič was on the ropes, but he caught a break when Movistar’s Enric Mas – already locked into fifth overall – proved something of an ally. Roglič steadied the ship by following the Spaniard in the finale, and he did enough to win the Vuelta by 24 seconds.

More than anyone else, Roglič has embodied José Miguel Echavarri’s old maxim that the Vuelta is something of a resit for riders who fail the main exam in July – though in the Slovenian’s defence, he was mostly the victim of maddening bad luck at the Tour. 

2021 was a case in point. Still smarting from his heartbreaking defeat the previous September, Roglič beat Pogačar soundly in a high-octane edition of Itzulia Basque Country and he started the Tour more or less on an equal footing with his compatriot. His challenge was ruined by a series of early crashes, however, and he abandoned a week into the race.

After recovering in time to claim the Olympic time trial title, Roglič opted to return to the friendly confines of the Vuelta, and he got off to a flying start with victory in the time trial on the opening night in Burgos.

Although Roglič would farm out the red jersey to Rein Taaramäe and Odd Christian Eiking, he was the dominant force from start to finish on this Vuelta, and he reached his apotheosis at Lagos de Covadonga on stage 16.

For much of his career, he won races by a process of what the journalist Daniel Friebe termed ‘Roglification,’ namely by having his team control affairs before he burnt off his rivals on the final ramps of the final climb.

On a day of driving rain in Asturias, Roglič was rather more uninhibited, cutting loose by attacking with 60km to go on the slopes of La Collada Llomena. Only Giro winner Egan Bernal could follow his tempo, and Roglič would distance the Colombian on the slopes of Lagos de Covadonga itself in what was probably the finest display of his career.

Roglič capped his Vuelta by winning the final time trial into Santiago de Compostela, but his third triumph had never been in any doubt from the moment he rolled down the start ramp in Burgos.

Another year, another Tour disappointment, another Vuelta reboot. By 2022, Roglič’s Grand Tour career seemed to be following a distinct pattern. Although the season began with wins at Paris-Nice and the Dauphiné, his Tour challenge was again ruined by early crashes. Still, Roglič did help teammate Jonas Vingegaard win the whole thing with his aggression on the Galibier before taking his leave to prepare for the Vuelta.

When Roglič won in Laguardia to move into red on stage 4, the Vuelta looked to be following a familiar script, but it was torn up at Pico Jano two days later when a rampant Remco Evenepoel soared into the overall lead. 

Evenepoel underscored the point in the Alicante time trial on stage 10, doing unto Roglič what the Slovenian had done to everyone else on the corresponding day in Pau three years earlier. Now 2:41 down, Roglič looked a beaten man, but he made a stab at something of a remontada when the race reached Andalusia at the end of the second week, clawing back a minute at La Pandera and grabbing another handful of seconds at Sierra Nevada.

Although Evenepoel had still appeared solid on those summit finishes, Roglič’s greater experience and his special relationship with the Vuelta meant that the Belgian was in for a tense final week, starting with the fraught ending to stage 16 in Tomares.

Evenepoel had the good fortune to puncture just inside the final 3km – or perhaps the common sense not to raise his hand until he had reached that marker – and that meant he was awarded the same time as the second group despite rolling three minutes down.

Amid the tumult of the finale, of course, Roglič wasn’t to know that, and he strained for every available second on the run to the line. His eagerness, however, led to a clash with Fred Wright, and he fell 100m from the finish. Although he gained eight seconds on Evenepoel, it was all in vain. Roglič suffered a shoulder injury in the crash and abandoned the following morning, ending his bid for a record fourth successive triumph.

The rise of Vingegaard led to a redeployment of Roglič in 2023, with the Slovenian dispatched to the Giro while his teammate led the line alone at the Tour. Roglič might not have been a fan of the arrangement, but it worked out smoothly for Jumbo-Visma. After Roglič scored a last-gasp Giro triumph by taking pink from Geraint Thomas on the final weekend at Monte Lussari, Vingegaard overwhelmed Pogačar in July to take a second straight Tour.

Roglič had the Vuelta pencilled in from the start of the year, but he was compelled to share leadership when Vingegaard took up his option to add the race to his programme. The hierarchy was blurred still further when Sepp Kuss, nominally the team’s super domestique, moved into the race lead in the opening week with a fine solo victory from the break at Javalambre.

The usual fallback in such situations is for a team to declare that the road will decide, but the road of this Vuelta proved unusually reticent about making a firm decision. Roglič began his charge up the GC by winning at Xorret de Catí and placing third in the Valladolid time trial, and he moved into second place at the end of week two when Evenepoel cracked unexpectedly on the Col d’Aubisque.

Evenepoel had been Jumbo-Visma’s one real rival, and his collapse removed a crucial pressure valve. Their triumvirate now occupied the top three places on GC and, with no threat to their hegemony in sight, Vingegaard, Kuss and Roglič were fighting it out among themselves for red.

Two competing schools of thought quickly sprang up. One camp, which apparently included Vingegaard, believed that that Jumbo-Visma should race to ensure Kuss’ overall victory. Another, to which Roglič seemed to be a subscriber, felt that the trio should race it out.

At first, Jumbo-Visma didn’t seem to commit fully to either philosophy, with Vingegaard leapfrogging Roglič into second after victory at Bejes on stage 16. On the Angliru a day later, Roglič was the aggressor and Vingegaard opted to follow rather than wait for Kuss. The day yielded stage victory for Roglič, while Vingegaard moved to within eight seconds of red.

That was as close as he would get. “I was put in a somewhat difficult situation, where I perhaps felt that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Vingegaard said afterwards. For the final days of the race, Jumbo-Visma rowed in behind Kuss to sweep the podium and the year's Grand Tours, and Roglič had to settle for third overall.

It was a further frustration after being forced to sit out the Tour and it marked the point of no return for Roglič. For all manager Richard Plugge’s insistence that Roglič was the “king” of his team, it was clear that he had been forced from his throne. Shortly after the Vuelta, it was confirmed that he would leave for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2024. 

A new team but a familiar Vuelta scenario for Roglič. For the third time in succession, a heavy crash had brought a premature end to his Tour challenge, even if there was little indication that he could live on the same plane as the retooled Pogačar of 2024.

No matter, Roglič was quickly redeployed to the Vuelta to salvage something tangible from his season. He arrived at the start in Lisbon as the obvious favourite, and he quickly lived up to his billing by winning atop Pico Villuercas on stage 4 to move into red. So far, so normal, but the Vuelta rarely runs smoothly, and Ben O’Connor put a wrinkle in affairs by moving almost five minutes clear of Roglič after his stunning breakaway win in Yunquera two days later.

It would be a Vuelta of occasionally mixed messages from Roglič, who responded by winning at Cazorla on stage 8 and then struggling on the road to Granada the next day. The scenario repeated itself in Asturias in the second week, when Roglič moved to within 1:21 of O’Connor with a blistering display on the Puerto de Ancares before betraying real signs of wear atop Cuitu Negru two days later. 

Amid the usual melee beyond the finish line at Cuitu Negru, the usually implacable Roglič chastised his soigneur for touching his injured back, fuelling speculation that he was still nursing his injuries from the Tour. That impression was borne out by a less than emphatic display at Lagos de Covadonga, but it had still sufficed to nudge Roglič to within five seconds of O’Connor’s red jersey. 

His inevitable overhaul of O’Connor came on the Alto de Moncalvillo on stage 19. Rumours of Evenepoel’s eventual transfer to Red Bull had gone into overdrive during the final week of the Vuelta, and that served as the backdrop to Roglič’s show of force here.

Roglič reached the climb knowing that a simple display of ‘Roglification’ would suffice to win the Vuelta, but instead he opted for his most aggressive showing since his exhibition at Lagos de Covadonga in 2021. 

After Red Bull shredded the front group, Roglič attacked alone with 5km to go, for his biggest winning margin in any race since the 2021 Vuelta. Winning a record-equalling fourth Vuelta, it seemed, wasn’t the only goal – with two years of his contract remaining and with Evenepoel waiting in the wings, Roglič clearly wanted to remind his employer exactly what he could do. 

He did, but it didn’t stave off the inevitable. After ill-starred tilts at the Giro and Tour in 2025, Roglič found himself eased aside this season. Jai Hindley and Giulio Pellizzari led at the Giro, while new arrival Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz headlined at the Tour. 

Two years on from his last day of glory, the Vuelta is set to be Roglič’s final act as a Red Bull rider – if he does make the start, of course. But it might also be the start of a new chapter in his career. Despite persistent rumours of his imminent retirement, Roglič appears to have warmed to the idea of extending his career into 2027. Pinarello-Q36.5, Bahrain Victorious and – most unexpectedly – Lotto Intermarché are among the teams reportedly signed up for the Roglič sweepstakes. 

Pogačar is the main event and the seemingly unbeatable favourite, but Roglič has been central to the narrative in each of his six Vuelta participations to date, and that doesn’t look like changing in 2026.