One of the few crumbs of comfort for Primož Roglič on his umpteenth difficult day at the Tour de France was the proximity of his team bus to the finish line, having crossed the line of stage 12, battered by a high-speed crash and with his overall ambitions seriously derailed. It was one of the closest.
Second in line, next to the group of TotalEnergies vehicles, on a long country boulevard outside Viileneuve-sur-Lot, Roglič was able to reach the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe bus in just a few minutes. He went inside without speaking to the journalists to remove his torn racing gear and damaged helmet and, after a shower, begin to assess the extent of his injuries.
“The doctor will now examine him and we will see,” sports director Rolf Aldag told dozens of journalists gathered around the temporary barrier erected between the bus and the road to give some space to the riders and staff.
The time lost was already written in black and white: 2’27 on the main peloton, which means that Roglič – already the worst placed of the “Big Four” – slipped to 4’42 on the leader of the race, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates). It was his second fall in less than 24 hours, after his crash at the end of stage 11, while he was in the company of Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep).
But unlike his crash near the finish at Le Lioran on Thursday, this time he was well outside the three-point “safe zone”, and the time gap when he crossed the line was the one that appeared on the results sheet.
Unsurprisingly, none of Roglič’s teammates were willing to discuss the situation, given the uncertainty surrounding the extent of Roglic’s injuries. While he could finish the stage, any underlying injuries could take some time to be discovered, as was the case with teammate Aleksandr Vlasov, who broke his ankle on stage nine but finished the day’s race, only for the fracture to become apparent during subsequent medical examinations. The near-disastrous consequences of this on the Slovenian’s bid for the GC were also evident, but as the staff were at pains to point out afterwards, what really mattered was the health of the rider himself.
“He’s taking a shower now, so he’s cleaning everything up,” Aldag said. “Obviously he crossed the finish line, he’s obviously lost time and that’s not good, and we definitely wanted to avoid that.”
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Aldag had not yet had time to speak with Roglič about how the accident had happened, the physical consequences rather than the reasons being the team’s immediate concern.
“No, everyone feels like the accident happened and we lost a lot of time and we’re concerned about his health right now because that’s the most important thing right now,” he said.
Asked about the fight for the general classification, Aldag let out a short, hollow laugh, then said: “Right now we have different thoughts than the fight for the podium.
“It’s really a question of how he is, whether he can continue or not. We have the best medical team you can imagine and we’ll see what happens tonight and tomorrow.”
He had no idea how much time he had lost, he said, in response to another reporter who asked him virtually the same question. “I don’t know how much it is, about four minutes of lead in the general classification, but that’s not what’s important or too relative at the moment. The main thing is that he crashed very, very hard and we have to think about the other riders. It’s never good, it’s never nice and it was certainly not the plan.”
Aldag was certainly in no mood to start a blame game when asked by a reporter whether the race’s road furniture was perhaps not well marked.
“I think that’s what we deal with every day: we all have lead cars, we all knew everyone would be really tired after a day like this, and things like that happen.
“They (the road equipment) are valid 364 days a year, to protect people in normal traffic, but they certainly don’t protect the riders in the final. But no one is to blame, they are there and we knew they would be there, I don’t know if there was another alternative to reach the city centre than taking this road.”
Regarding Roglič himself and the consequences, Aldag added: “He is definitely injured and we have to listen to our medical team, see what they think and what he can do.”
Resilience
Whatever the final outcome, the events of stage 12 for Roglič are unfortunately just the latest chapter in a series of misfortunes and accidents that have befallen the Slovenian on the Tour de France in recent years.
After losing the 2020 Tour on the final day to Pogačar in the Plances des Belles Filles time trial, Roglič was forced to abandon the race in 2021 and 2022 due to the consequences of his unlucky crashes in the first week. In 2021, during a chaotic third stage where he was one of dozens of riders to crash on dangerously narrow roads in the finale, Roglič completed the course but eventually abandoned it a few days later. Then in 2022, he hit a safety haystack on the Roubaix stage, dislocating his shoulder and injuring his back. Once again, he fought back, but abandoned it after the Alps.
Roglič’s determination to continue for as long as possible is a tribute to the massive resilience that has always characterised the Slovenian, but this year he has had to deal with another series of falls.
Roglič, who crashed in the mass accident in Italy-Basque Country last April while leading the race, had to withdraw from Liège-Bastogne-Liège this spring. He returned to competition in the Critérium du Dauphiné and managed to win it. But during the race, he suffered a heavy crash on the fifth stage, which saw the stage neutralized and many riders involved, which also had harmful consequences.
As for the Tour, earlier this week when Roglič spoke to reporters on the first rest day he was celebrating being in his best overall position – and without a crash – since 2020. However, Friday’s events caused the latest upheaval in the Slovenian’s rollercoaster relationship with racing.
As always in these situations, while the media were outside the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe waiting for Aldag’s speech, the mundane and the everyday easily mixed with the drama and tension that enveloped the team at the time.
An elderly French woman, apparently oblivious to the situation, approached the waiting press officer to tell her that she had heard the team was handing out gifts and if so, could she please have one. After she left empty-handed, someone unseen pulled his cell phone out from behind the curtain on the bus stairs and snapped a photo of the crowd of waiting journalists.
The bikes have been cleaned and put away, the team vehicles have slowly dislodged themselves from the mass of vehicles lining either side of the narrow country streets and have sped off to their respective hotels. The Tour de France continues, in other words, as unstoppable as ever.
It remains to be seen whether this year’s peloton will still contain Roglič on Friday morning.
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