Disappointment at Red Bull after Primoz Roglic lost his chance to win the Tour de France: "Terrible, the fall of our leader"

Stage 12 of the Tour de France 2024, although decided by a sprint, had movements in the general classification. Primoz Roglic was brought down by a crash 12 km from the finish line, with the Slovenian losing considerable time on the rest of his GC contenders.

As a result, the Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe leader entered the finish more than two and a half minutes behind the rest of the favourites, losing virtually all chances to fight for the Tour de France win only halfway through the Grande Boucle. The German team is obviously devastated by the result.

“He’s definitely hurt,” Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe sport director Rolf Aldag told media at the finish, in quotes collected by Velo. “It’s terrible, obviously, with our leader crashing. After the fall of yesterday, a heavy crash today, now the doctor will examine him and we’ll see. He’s in the shower and he cleaned up everything.”

“Obviously, he lost some time. That was not good and we certainly wanted to avoid that,” Aldag continues. “We have different goals than fighting for the podium: really how he is and if he can continue or not. I think we have the best medical team you can think of and we’ll see what tonight and tomorrow brings.”

In addition, the Red Bull sport director also stressed the fact that right now they don't care about the overall, they are only focused on Roglic's health. “Right now, that’s not too relevant. It’s the fact he just crashed really hard, I’ve also seen some other riders who crashed hard … it’s never good, it’s never nice, it certainly wasn’t the plan,” Aldag concludes. “We all know after a day like this that everyone would be really tired, and things like that happen. The situation is good for 364 days, to protect people in normal traffic. It’s definitely not really protective for riders in the final, but there’s nobody to blame. It’s right there, we knew it would be there and I don’t know if there was any alternative to come to the city centre than that road. That crash happened, we lost a lot of time and we care about his health because in the end, that’s much more important.”