31/05/2024

"The yellow jersey is the medium-term goal" - BORA - hansgrohe counts on Primoz Roglic winning the Tour de France

Ralph Denk dreams of overall victory in the Tour de France. At the most important cycling event of the year, his team with top star Primoz Roglic will try to win the yellow jersey while Jay Hindley and Alexander Vlasov should be ready to assist the Slovenian in his chase for Maillot Jaune.

"The yellow jersey is the medium-term goal," the BORA - hansgrohe boss told media. We can only imagine what bigger goals could up for the German team, but with the ambitious Red Bull set to debut by the team's side, it's very well possible the goal is to see the German-Austrian formation rise to the no.1 team in the World ranking at some point. With the big names reportedly in negotiations to join the team in next years, it might not be just a wild dream.

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However the current focus is solely on Grande Boucle, where Bora nominates the best they have (at least in the climbing resort). "Primoz should not and must not crash, we have a lot of technical stages," said Denk. The Slovenian should ride as far up the field as possible.

To get him in position, the team should "protect him with massive manpower." This duty will be assigned to strong engines Nico Denz and Marco Haller. In the past, Roglic has repeatedly had bad luck with crashes. In 2022, he infamously crashed out of the Vuelta a Espana while sitting second overall.

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In 2020 and 2021, it was Tadej Pogacar who stood between Roglic and Tour de France title and the situation won't be very different this year in that regard. Only a hard and strenuous path will lead past the two-time winner. On Sunday, Pogacar won the Giro in a dominant manner - almost ten minutes ahead of another Bora rider Daniel Martínez.

However Pogacar won't be Roglic's only challenger. Another two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard is racing against the time to get into shape after the Itzulia Basque Country crash where Roglic was involved as well. Another victim of the said incident was Remco Evenepoel, ambitious Belgian is targetting his Tour de France debut this summer.