In the end, Jumbo-Visma was simply no longer big enough for both Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard and so a divorce, amicable or not, was expected sooner or later.
That was already apparent in the depths of last winter, when management took the decision to omit Roglič from the line-up for the 2023 Tour de France, preferring to stake their entire challenge on the defending champion Vingegaard.
Roglič knew then that a return to the top of the team’s Tour hierarchy was out of his hands. No matter what he achieved in 2023, Roglič realised he would only ever be reinstalled as Jumbo’s Tour de France leader if Vingegaard were to fall short in July.
Once Vingegaard delivered his second straight Tour victory, Roglič’s days at the team were finite. True, he was still under contract until the end of 2024 and, as recently as September, manager Richard Plugge was adamant that he remained their “king” but an exit strategy was already being devised.
Plugge released Roglič from his contract to allow him to move to Bora-Hansgrohe, and the keys to the Visma Lease a Bike Tour de France kingdom, now belonged to Vingegaard alone, with Sepp Kuss now the Dane's understudy after his impressive Vuelta performance.
In cycling, the same tropes have a habit of repeating themselves across the generations. The story of a superseded leader seeking better opportunities elsewhere is one we have seen before, with varying levels of success.
Bernard Hinault famously pulled it off when Laurent Fignon squeezed him out at Renault. More recently, and altogether less successfully, Chris Froome left Ineos Grenadiers for Israel Premier Tech once it became apparent that he had dropped beneath Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas in the pecking order.
Save for their age and ambition, there are few parallels between Froome’s ill-fated move to Israel and Roglič’s switch to Bora-Hansgrohe.
For one thing, Roglič arrives at Bora-Hansgrohe on the back of one of the finest seasons of his career. Coming into the Vuelta, he had a 100% 2023 stage race record, winning Tirreno-Adriatico, the Volta a Catalunya, the Giro and the Vuelta a Burgos. Only two teammates – and, perhaps, the vagaries of internal politics – prevented him from continuing the sequence at the Vuelta, where he still won at Xorret de Catí and atop the Angliru.
Bora-Hansgrohe’s approach to recruitment over the years has generally been sober and clear-headed, and the signing of Roglič was no exception.
When manager Ralph Denk announced the signing in early October, for instance, he seemed to confirm all preconceptions about German financial prudence by noting that saving money on his budget in recent seasons had allowed him to make a move for Roglič when he came on the market.
This was neither an impulse buy nor a statement move, in other words, but an opportunity that simply had to be grasped.
Best chance
Despite Ineos’ interest in the Roglič sweepstakes, Bora-Hansgrohe was probably the most suitable landing place. Roglič was the equivalent of an NFL quarterback in his prime, testing the waters in free agency, and he settled on Bora because they were the team that gave him the best chance of winning, as soon as 2024.
A lot of the groundwork in building a Tour-winning team has already been done in the German WorldTour team. There is a deep cadre of climbers on the roster, as well as some Grand Tour-winning nous in the team car and some of the most advanced equipment in the WorldTour, particularly against for time trials.
Even if Roglič has, as he admitted, just left the best team in the world, he won’t exactly be starting from scratch at Bora-Hansgrohe.
Following Peter Sagan’s departure in the winter of 2021, Bora had already opted for a change in direction, switching their focus more firmly to the general classification at Grand Tours.
Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov were signed to lead on the road, while Rolf Aldag came on board behind the scenes to help reconfigure the squad. The addition of the newly retired Enrico Gasparotto as directeur sportif, too, proved a master stroke.
The new approach was validated quickly, as Hindley climbed a fine overall victory at the 2022 Giro, coolly waiting to strike the decisive blow on the final three kilometres of climbing of the entire race. He was backed by a Bora-Hansgrohe squad that proved to be the strongest in the Giro – and the most inventive, too, as demonstrated by their onslaught in Turin on stage 14.
In 2023, Bora-Hansgrohe sent Hindley to the Tour with the aim of taking a podium spot behind the seemingly unassailable Vingegaard and Pogacar. The Australian looked on course to do so after winning a stage and wearing yellow for a day in the Pyrenees, but a heavy crash in week two ultimately compromised his race, limiting him to 7th overall. Even with a clear run, mind, Hindley was unlikely to live with the Big Two over three weeks.
By adding Roglič, Bora have signed the only rider in the peloton – together with Remco Evenepoel, perhaps – who really believes he can thrive against Vingegaard and Pogacar in July.
Logic says that Vingegaard and Pogačar remain a rung above everyone else, but Roglič will be encouraged by a route with some 59km of time trialling on the agenda. If not now, when?
The structure was already in place, and now Bora have the bona fide contender they were lacking. The question for the start of 2024 will be how smoothly Bora integrate Roglič into their team. The Slovenian has just left the only WorldTour team he knew, after all, a squad that had grown up around him over the years and often been tailored specifically to his needs.
Denk has acknowledged that they cannot simply “copy and paste” the way Jumbo-Visma used to race for Roglič.
By the same token, the team will have to make some adjustments to get the most from Roglič’s style, not least his unerring ability to pick up seconds – both in bonuses and in real time – with his ferocious, late accelerations.
There is also the matter of Roglič’s supporting cast in July. Bora-Hansgrohe’s array of climbing talent includes Hindley, Vlasov, Lennard Kämna, Emanuel Buchmann, Sergio Higuita and new arrival Daniel Martínez - though no longer, perhaps, Cian Uijtdebroeks. Denk, Aldag et al have some big decisions to make on how best to deploy them across the 2024 calendar and woh to select for the Tour de France.
Denk has already suggested that Hindley is likely to be sent to the Tour to serve as Roglič’s most deluxe domestique rather than dispatched to Italy to try to win a second Giro. One imagines Martínez will also be by his side, along with at least two more of the aforementioned climbers. Bora-Hansgrohe, in other words, are all-in on the Roglič project.
Although Roglič has won the Vuelta three times, a Giro and an Olympic title, much of his reputation rests on his ill-starred relationship with the Tour, and, in particular, that indelible afternoon at La Planche des Belles Filles in 2020.
Cautious of tactics and guarded of comments, Roglič had been greeted relatively coolly to that point in his career, but nothing transfigures a rider's reputation quite like defeat.
His dignity amid that crushing disappointment won him a new legion of admirers. Further heartbreak at the following two Tours, where crashes interrupted his challenge, only heightened his appeal as a man doomed to unlimited heartbreak at the Tour.
Roglič's victory on Monte Lussari last May provided some redemption for La Planche, but the account hasn’t been entirely settled just yet.
The Tour is the missing piece. Whether it ends in agony or in ecstasy, the Roglič reboot at Bora-Hansgrohe will be one of the stories of the season. It certainly won't be boring.
