Primož Roglič’s quest for that elusive Tour de France title will have to wait one more year.
The Slovenian, who finished a shocking second in the 2020 edition after losing the yellow jersey on the second-to-last day, is out of the race after a hard crash on Thursday’s stage 12, his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team said Friday morning.
“Primož Roglič underwent careful examination by our medical team after yesterday’s stage and again this morning. The decision has been taken that he will not start today’s stage of the Tour de France, to focus on upcoming goals,” the team said in a brief statement on social media channels. The team offered no information on the nature or severity of his injuries.
Roglič had been sitting fourth overall, 2:15 behind yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar, when he was caught up in a late-stage crash on Thursday as the peloton negotiated a long traffic island. He soon remounted but was clearly uncomfortable; even assisted by five Red Bull teammates he steadily lost time to the leaders as the sprint wound up and dropped to sixth overall.
After that fateful 2020 Tour, Roglič has enjoyed wide success, winning two editions of the Vuelta a España and the 2023 Giro d’Italia, which he took in a near mirror-image of his 2020 Tour defeat by taking the lead in a penultimate-day time trial.
And this year, he switched from his longtime Jumbo-Visma team to Red Bull to have sole leadership. But the now-34-year-old has not finished a Tour de France in three tries, as crash injuries knocked him out in 2021, 2022, and now this year.
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