After years riding for Tadej Pogacar and Primoz Roglic, Slovenian stalwart set for key role alongside Remco Evenepoel at Red Bull after retirement

Luka Mezgec already knows what comes after the finish line on Sunday. The 38-year-old Slovenian, who will end his professional racing career at the European Championships on home roads, has signed a deal to become a sports director at Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe in 2027.

The agreement was actually completed during this year’s Tour de France, several months before Mezgec's final race. Initial discussions began around the Giro d’Italia and, after considering three possibilities for his post-racing career, he chose the team of Remco Evenepoel, Primoz Roglic and Florian Lipowitz.

“I’ve wanted for some time to stay in cycling as a sports director after the end of my career,” Mezgec explained in an interview with Slovenian broadcaster Siol. “In the end I had three options, and of those Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe seemed the most interesting to me.”

It ensures there will be almost no separation between Mezgec’s two lives in professional cycling. Sunday brings the end of 14 seasons as a rider; his next season will begin inside one of the WorldTour’s biggest sporting projects.

Mezgec retires with a career that evolved considerably from the one he began at WorldTour level with Argos-Shimano in 2013. During his years as a sprinter, he became the first Slovenian to win a Giro d’Italia stage when he took the final stage into Trieste in 2014. Three Volta a Catalunya stage victories came during the same season, while he later added further wins and the Slovenian road race title in 2017.

He joined the GreenEDGE organisation in 2016 and stayed for 11 seasons across its Orica, Mitchelton-Scott, BikeExchange and Jayco AlUla identities. As his own opportunities in bunch finishes became less frequent, Mezgec increasingly worked as a lead-out rider and experienced road captain.

His national-team career developed along a similar path during the rise of Slovenia into one of cycling’s leading nations. Mezgec has raced in support of both Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogacar, and was part of the Slovenian teams that helped Pogacar claim successive rainbow jerseys.

When announcing his retirement plans earlier this year, Mezgec singled those victories out among the experiences he was most grateful for. “I’m also grateful and happy that I was there and helped him win the world champion’s jersey, and twice,” he said. “Not everyone gets such an opportunity.”

The move to Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe will now put him on the other side of the radio, within a team that already contains many of the riders he has spent his final seasons racing alongside and against.

Despite the star names already on Red Bull’s WorldTour roster, one considerably younger rider played an important part in Mezgec’s decision.

Alessio Magagnotti will step up from the team's development structure in 2027. The 19-year-old Italian sprinter secured his first professional victory at the Deutschland Tour in August and is regarded within the Red Bull setup as an important part of its future sprint plans.

For Mezgec, Magagnotti represents an area where nearly two decades of racing experience can be applied immediately. “That was one of the biggest challenges for me,” he explained. “Alessio is a very young sprinter who will move up from the development team to the professionals next year, and I can offer him all the experience I’ve gained over these years as a sprinter and later as a lead-out rider.”

Mezgec has spent both halves of a sprint career on the road himself: first trying to finish the job, and later trying to put somebody else into position to do it. “It would be difficult for me to explain things to someone that I’ve never experienced myself,” he said. “But I know what it’s like in the bunch, how the build-up to a sprint works and what a sprinter needs. I can pass those experiences on to him. I’d like to work on things I know about.”

Before Mezgec starts working with Magagnotti, Evenepoel and the rest of the Red Bull setup, there is still one race left. The European Championships in Slovenia were always intended to be his farewell. When Mezgec confirmed his retirement in January, his only request regarding his 2026 programme was that nothing should be scheduled afterwards, allowing him to finish at home.

The road to October 4 turned out rather differently from the farewell season he had envisaged. A heavy Scheldeprijs crash in April left him with three broken ribs and cost him a final appearance at the Giro d’Italia, the race where his breakthrough Grand Tour victory had come 12 years earlier.

He returned to competition in June, completed the final months of his last season and brought his 11-year GreenEDGE career to an end at Gooikse Pijl in September. The World Championships in Montreal then provided his penultimate professional start.

Sunday leaves one final race number to pin on. Mezgec will do so in Slovenian colours, on home roads and among a national generation whose rise has accompanied much of the second half of his career. He will also line up against riders he will soon be working alongside at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, including Remco Evenepoel. Once that race is over, there is no uncertain retirement period waiting on the other side: the contract for his return to the WorldTour in 2027 has already been signed.