As if abandoning the race that was his major target of the season was not bad enough, Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has revealed that he suffered a vertebral fracture in his crash on stage 12 of the Tour de France.
“Life is not the easiest sometimes, huh?” Roglič wrote in an Instagram post disclosing the injury, adding that he was “slowly getting back on bike and taking my time to recover.”
The back injury is the latest setback for a rider who has an unfortunately long history of crashing out of the Tour. In both 2021 and 2022, Roglič abandoned the race after crashes, the latter leaving him with a back injury as well. This year’s Tour saw Roglič hit the deck near the end of stage 11 without any serious injuries only to crash again, ultimately suffering his vertebral fracture, when a rider in the middle of the pack went down due to road furniture and proceeded to cause a major pileup on stage 12.
On several occasions in the past, Roglič has ended his season on a high note at the Vuelta a España, where he counts three career overall victories, two of them (in 2020 and 2021) coming after Tour de France disappointments. The back injury he sustained at this year’s Tour, however, makes it uncertain whether the 34-year-old Slovenian will be able to make the start this time around.
“Primož is currently only training a bit on the indoor trainer,” team boss Ralph Denk said in a podcast earlier this week. “I don’t think it’s clear yet whether he will participate in the Vuelta.”
Indeed, if Roglič is unable to race the Vuelta, it would be a bitter blow for a Red Bull squad that expended significant resources in acquiring Roglič and planned the season around his Grand Tour goals. Although the team got off to a decent start this year in the GC department as Daniel Martínez rode to runner-up honors at the Giro d’Italia and then Roglič won the Critérium du Dauphiné, Red Bull came away from the Tour with no one in the top 10 overall and no stage wins either.
Fortunately, Roglič does still have some time yet to recover ahead of what could be an attempt to tie Roberto Heras’s record for four career Vuelta wins. The race gets underway on August 17 in Lisbon.
If he can indeed make the start, he will be primed to battle with Sepp Kuss, who emerged from some intra-team drama at Jumbo-Visma with none other than Roglič himself to win last year’s race.
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