"We have to admit that Pogacar is one level above" - But Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe have a Tour de France plan

Although Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard have taken the majority of headlines heading into the 2025 Tour de France, neither of the superstar duo will be the rider with the most Grand Tour wins on the start line. That honour is likely to fall on the shoulders of Primoz Roglic and the experienced Slovenian shouldn't be ruled out of the Maillot Jaune fight according to Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe.

That's not to say that Roglic and his team think things will be easy against the reigning Tour de France champion though. "We have to admit that Pogacar is one level above. We have to accept that’s how it is, and we cannot negotiate it," explains Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe's Head of Performance Dan Lorang in conversation with Velo. "It’s hard to go into a race and say, ‘OK, when Pogacar goes, we follow’. We’re seeing again and again that it’s just not always possible. And it’s hard to know what we can do against it."

Roglic may, as mentioned, have more Grand Tour wins on his palmares than both Pogacar and Vingegaard, with 5 (4x Vuelta, 1x Giro) to the 4 (3x Tour, 1x Giro) of his compatriot and 2 (2x Tour) of his former teammate, but now aged 35, Roglic is beginning to run out of time to win that missing Maillot Jaune.

So just how can Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe go about closing to the gap and taking the fight to Pogacar? "What you can do is play strong and use tactical cards, which we tried in the classics," Lorang analyses. "If you get things right, we’ve seen having numbers up the road for the final can count."

"Pogacar is so impressive, but he cannot do everything. We’ve seen that before. We can try to ride clever as a team. But when it comes to one-to-one, we’ve seen there are a few guys who are just a totally different level at the moment," Lorang concludes. "There’s no clear solution for us on that. All that us in the performance team can do is work hard and make our guys strong enough to use numbers or create surprises, like we did in the classics. But it feels like there won’t be so many surprises this year. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry."