"Primoz Roglic crashed at nearly every Grand Tour in recent memory" - Chris Horner weighs in on Red Bull's leadership debate after Remco Evenepoel signing

As Remco Evenepoel prepares to leave Soudal - Quick-Step for Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe in 2026, former Vuelta a Espana winner turned cycling analyst Chris Horner isn't holding back on what needs to happen to make the move work.

“The biggest one that I see, page one problem, is: can Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel play nice?” Horner said on his Beyond the Coverage YouTube channel. “That’s the number one, first page problem right here for Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe.”

Evenepoel’s long-rumoured transfer became official this summer, signalling a huge power shift in the World Tour. But Horner sees more questions than answers, particularly with leadership structure and internal chemistry.

“I look at it as he’s coming over and Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel will have to play nice,” Horner said. “That’s the number one, first page problem.”

To illustrate what can go wrong, Horner recalled Jumbo-Visma’s 2023 Vuelta a Espana, where Sepp Kuss won the Red Jersey, but not without internal tension between Jonas Vingegaard and Roglic. “In 2023, Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard did not play nice with their teammate Sepp Kuss… I believe all that chaos was started from Jonas Vingegaard attacking, and then Primoz going, ‘Hey, I’m jumping all in.’”

According to Horner, that history matters. “Now we know they got rid of Primoz Roglic,” he added. “Now was it just because he couldn’t play nice?”

Evenepoel, by contrast, doesn’t raise the same red flags. “I don’t have much disbelief that Remco Evenepoel will not play nice with Primoz Roglic,” Horner said. “Because I have seen the Belgian wonderkid play nice with his other teammates and help his teammates out by doing magnificent pulls on the front for them time and time again. So I don’t have any question marks around Remco. The question mark is: can Primoz Roglic play nice with Remco?”

“If I’m the directeur sportif over there at BORA - hansgrohe, I’m saying that I’ll race these guys all together — both of them — and I’ll race a superstar studded team at all of the biggest races there in Europe,” Horner said.

His recommendation: avoid splitting the calendar between the two riders. “You gotta bring those two together,” he said. “Unlike myself with Team Saturn when I’m having that conversation with my teammates of [Tom] Danielson and Nathan O’Neill where I’m saying, ‘We have to play nice…’ we’re gonna have to share victories.” 

Horner added: “So if you think about it, these two have to play nice. And if they do and they can learn to share victories, then when you get into July, it starts setting up a different kind of chemistry in the team.”

Horner didn’t let either team — Soudal - Quick-Step or Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe — off the hook when it came to strategy. Even in the 2025 Tour de France, Horner pointed to a key moment when Roglic failed to help teammate Florian Lipowitz. “Did he drop back for Lipowitz that’s third and wearing the white leader’s jersey at the Tour de France? He did not,” Horner noted. “But then he did take a nature break at the bottom of that climb when Ben O’Connor lit everybody up.”

The implication: BORA's tactical decision-making still falls short of what’s needed to win. “They have certainly had some bad tactics and there’s none bigger than going into the 2025 Tour de France,” Horner said. “There was no real support for Lipowitz and it didn’t come in the form of Primoz Roglic… because the directeur sportif there allowed Roglic to stay up the road.”

Evenepoel’s inconsistency is another concern. “We get to Flèche Wallonne and we see a little dent. Or maybe it was just a little bump. No one was quite sure,” Horner said. “But we were 100% sure at Liège–Bastogne–Liège when Remco Evenepoel got dropped at La Redoute and couldn’t do anything about it and spectacularly dropped time everywhere.”

Despite that clear sign of fatigue, Horner said Evenepoel’s team made the wrong call: “They still sent Remco to Tour de Romandie… that was the time where Remco needed to back the throttle off. He needed to rest for two weeks. He did not need to go over to a small race called Romandie.”

As for Roglic, his crash record looms large. “We know Roglic was down on form. He’d crashed at the Giro four different times,” Horner said of the 2025 Tour. “Primoz Roglic has crashed at nearly every Grand Tour in recent memory.”

And in Horner’s view, neither team has done enough to prevent it. “You look at the whole first 10 stages of racing [at the 2025 Tour de France]. Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe is basically racing at the back of the peloton,” he said. “You will not be able to do that and win Grand Tours.”

One name Horner highlighted as crucial to Evenepoel’s success is his longtime teammate Matteo Cattaneo. “It doesn’t say for sure in the articles that I have read… if Matteo Cattaneo… has for sure signed, but it says it looks like he’s going to sign,” Horner said. “If that’s the case… the most important rider that he’s taking with him is Matteo Cattaneo.”

Cattaneo, Horner believes, is the man who keeps Evenepoel safe. “Matteo Cattaneo is one of the riders that normally you see at the front of the peloton that’s dragging Remco Evenepoel and keeping the Belgian kid safe,” he said. The implications go beyond Evenepoel: “That not only helps Remco, but will help Primoz Roglic.”

“There’s no doubt about that,” Horner said of Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe’s superteam potential. “But they have to solve these first page problems that are existing.”

He returned, again and again, to one theme. “If I sign Remco Evenepoel over here, first step: can they play nice? Get them to play nice. Send them to all the races and just say, ‘Hey, you guys are going to all the races together.’ But Remco Evenepoel, you are not the leader. And Primoz Roglic, you are not the leader either. You guys are dual leadership here and you have to play nice together.”

“If these two guys play nice together,” Horner concluded, “we might see a superstar studded team that can push Tadej Pogacar to the limit — and make the Slovenian get interested in bike racing all over again, if he really was falling asleep at the 2025 Tour de France.”