Roglič forced to abandon Tour de France ahead of stage 13

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Primož Roglič’s hopes for a Tour de France victory were dashed following a crash on stage 12. The Slovenian cyclist, riding for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, faced misfortune once again as he went down hard in the lead-up to the sprint finish on Thursday.

The incident occurred on an A-road leading into Villeneuve-sur-Lot. Riders in front of Roglič toppled, leaving him no chance to avoid flying over their bikes and bodies, ultimately crashing face-first into the tarmac. He crossed the finish line bloodied and bruised, unable to keep up with his teammates who tried to pace him back. Stage winner Biniam Girmay and the rest of the general classification contenders finished four minutes ahead, marking the end of Roglič’s Tour de France campaign.

Roglič has experienced a series of unfortunate incidents in recent seasons. In 2021, he crashed twice in one stage of Paris-Nice, dislocating his shoulder and losing the yellow jersey. That same year, he also crashed out of the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. This year, a crash in Itzulia in April 2024 reminded everyone of his recurrent bad luck. Despite a promising start to this Tour de France with his new team, disaster struck again.

Team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s heartbreak

The disappointment extends beyond Roglič himself. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had high hopes for this year’s Tour, especially with their new sponsor, Red Bull, and the investment in Roglič and his support team. Lead sports director Rolf Aldag expressed the team’s dismay: “The doctor will examine him and see how he is. He had a shower just now but he got to the finish line. Obviously, he lost some time and that was not good and certainly we wanted to avoid that,” Aldag said.

“The crash happened and he lost a lot of time but we care about his health right now which is the most important. We have different thoughts right now than fighting for the podium. It’s about how he is and if he can continue or not. We have the best medical team you can think of and we can see what tomorrow and tonight brings. He lost around four minutes on GC but that’s not relevant. It’s the fact that he crashed really hard, it’s never good and never nice, it certainly wasn’t the plan.”

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Safety concerns

Questions about the road furniture that caused the crash were directed at Aldag. He responded, “I think we deal every day with safety. We know after a day like this everybody would be really tired and things happen. That’s the situation of sport. Road furniture is there 365 days per year to protect people in normal traffic. I don’t know if there was any other alternative to come to the city centre.”

Wout van Aert, a former teammate, also commented on the incident: “I feel really sorry for him, he had so much bad luck like this before already, the GC shouldn’t be decided on a stage like this. It was a really tricky village we passed through in the final with middle sections that were way too dangerous to be there. Only the first one was pointed out, that could have been bigger, signalled, or taken away. I feel really sorry for Primoz, I hope he’s OK.”

All photo credits: Getty