"With Roglic, we want to win another Grand Tour" - Slovenian hand-picked Belgian domestique for 2026 La Vuelta

Primoz Roglic is a rider that is now not the main player at Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe, but he continues to have a lot of leverage. As the team decided on its plans for the 2026 season, the Slovenian himself asked new signing Gianni Vermeersch to join him at the Vuelta a España.

Roglic enters an important season in his career, potentially his last, with riders such as Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz as teammates - the two riders that have joined Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard on the podium of the Tour de France in the past two seasons. He will neither race the Giro d'Italia or Tour de France; but has Tirreno-Adriatico, Itzulia Basque Country and the Tour de Romandie on his schedule as he looks to return to his winning ways.

On the opposite side of the team is Gianni Vermeersch, a new signing for the German team, who is set to be a leader in the cobbled classics. The team recognizes this, besides removing firepower from the Mathieu van der Poel block throughout the season.

"Vermeersch will be a key player in that story. We can't drastically change his role at Alpecin. What he's done there is world-class. The trick now is to get him to do the same," DS Sven Vanthourenhout said in words to Sporza. The 33-year old has performed very strongly in the cobbled classics over the past few years and has been van der Poel's right-hand man already for a substantial part of his career.

And he was not brought into the team just to be a number, but to have specific roles and high expectations. "He's already valued within the team. His presence doesn't go unnoticed. He can contribute things like telling the wind, for example. Those things are important in the spring".

However one race that was perhaps not in his initial schedule, which has changed, is the Vuelta a España. "Initially, he'll be a very important figure in the spring. He'll ride almost everything there. In the second half of the season, the Vuelta will be on his schedule, and he'll play a very important role. With Roglic, we want to win another Grand Tour."

It might have been previous knowledge or just the feedback from Vermeersch's first months in the team, but Roglic took a liking to the Belgian and has specifically requested Vermeersch's presence at the Vuelta a España. The Belgian's experience on flat and hilly terrain, combined with his explosivity, makes him a strong asset which can be used in multiple ways even during a three-week race where sprinters and climbers take most of the spotlight.

"That really came alive at the team camp in November. Roglic suddenly raised his hand to say that little Vermeersch wasn't unimportant," Vanthourenhout explained. "We know what he's like, we know he can help create a team dynamic. In that respect, he'll do incredibly well,"