"When Jonas really broke through, something changed for Primoz" - Team Visma | Lease a Bike DS knew it would be difficult to keep Roglic onboard
CyclingFriday, 12 January 2024 at 16:50
Merijn Zeeman is one of the leaders of the currently named Team Visma | Lease a Bike and knowing Primoz Roglic's personality, he understood a long while ago that it was going to be very difficult for his and Jonas Vingegaard's ambitions to fit perfectly together after the Dane Tour de France success.
"I have had many conversations with Primoz in recent years. When Jonas really broke through, something changed for Primoz. On the one hand, he really liked it and was extremely proud of the development of the team. But on the other hand, he gets a lot of motivation from winning himself. That is really the motivation for him to do it all," Zeeman told In de Leiderstrui. Vingegaard finished second in the 2021 Tour de France, and then after Roglic abandoned the 2022 Tour - after also helping the Dane, Vingegaard went on to take the yellow jersey in Paris. In 2023 he put on an equally strong performance, and showed all signs of wanting to keep aiming for the Tour, now Roglic's main goal after winning the Giro d'Italia.
"So I felt that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Primoz. But I also didn't want to just let him go, because he was extremely important to us," Zeeman tells. The two did not split over bad relations, but rather because the Slovenian felt he no longer had much of a chance of leading the team at the French Grand Tour on his own terms. Hence a team change was required, Roglic still had an ongoing contract but it was ended in amicable terms and he then joined BORA - hansgrohe - which in the meantime has announced it's lineup for the Tour, with a major focus on that exact goal.
And Roglic will be tough competition, his former DS is certain of. "I know that Jonas can beat anyone, but also that Primoz will beat us very often. On some arrivals he is almost impossible to beat," he tells. The high mountains will be key to the race - if crashes and mishaps do not decide it. Consistency will be key specially as the Tour becomes harder and harder, and with UAE Team Emirates having four assigned leaders, both teams have to expect a very hard race right from the start.
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Zeeman still wants to avoid taking any responsibility.
Primoz didn’t have any problem with Jonas’s rise. The truth is that he was perfictly comfortable with the internal competition and with how the team grow. The real problem was, how the two champions were treated. Primoz was simply put into position, which he was not able to equally fight for the win from. TJV simply put him in the second row, giving Jonas a better - a first class treatment.