The great unknown surrounding the next Tour de France It seems clear, at least for now. Will be Cousin Roglic in the Big Boucle to help Jonas Vingegaard versus Tadej Pogacar? Merijn Zeeman, sports director of Jumbo-Visma, gave the answer on the NOS channel at the end of the Tirreno-Adriatico in which the Slovenian raised his arms: “The Giro is also a very special race for us. Now we have won with Vingegaard and Roglic both the Tour and the Vuelta, but never the Giro. So that’s a very important goal. Under normal conditions, Roglic will not do the Tour”.
This being the case, the Dane will not have a Roglic whose contribution was key to defeating pogi in the last French round. Now, Primoz will reach his next goal with more speed, the Volta a Catalunya (March 20-26), after showing a great level in the last Tirreno that even surprised Zeeman himself: “Roglic is a very special athlete who, in addition to being very strong, too He knows very well what he can and cannot do. Winning three stages and the final classification was a big surprise for us. But very nice. She was out for a long time with her shoulder injury, so she couldn’t get on the bike for a long time. That was the reason why we had not yet lined up in principle for the Tirreno and he was not due to start until next week in the Tour of Catalonia. But the recovery was much faster and in the altitude training we saw that he was progressing very quickly”.
Regarding Paris-Nice, where his pupil Jonas finished in third place, he got rid of praise to his great dominator, Pogacar: “He’s unbelievably good, I wasn’t too surprised by his superiority, but of course it was very impressive.” Of course, despite the difference in level shown by the Dane compared to the Slovenian, Zeeman downplayed it, arguing that his rider was not in the best possible shape: “Jonas has never won a one-week World Tour race. That was a goal after winning the Tour de France. We were optimistic about the result, but after training at altitude in Tenerife, Vingegaard had to face some private issues that took him back and he was not at his best last week. That’s a valid excuse.” The Tour will put everyone in their true place…