Primož Roglič, who abandoned the 2024 Tour de France ahead of stage 13 due to a crash, is ready to return to racing at the Vuelta a España. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe announced its lineup for the race on Monday, confirming that Roglič will make the start as planned after a lengthy stretch off the bike.
The announcement cements Roglič’s position atop the bookies’ list of favorites for victory in Madrid.
Coming off of an overall victory at the Critérium du Dauphiné in June, Roglič was Red Bull’s team leader for the Tour de France. He was in the mix for a podium position through the first week and a half, but he crashed on back-to-back days on stages 11 and 12. The latter fall left him injured and forced him out of the race, and he has not competed since, raising question marks as to whether the 34-year-old Slovenian would be fit to start the Vuelta, a race he won in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Red Bull announced on Monday, five days ahead of the Vuelta start, that Roglič is indeed ready to go, a confirmation that should set up a much-anticipated battle between Roglič and his former teammate Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike). Kuss and Roglič finished first and third, respectively, in last year’s race, amid some intra-team drama around team leadership.
According to Red Bull, Roglič recently spent two and a half weeks at altitude in preparation for the Vuelta, and he will be joined in Red Bull’s strong GC-focused lineup for the race by Giro d’Italia runner-up Daniel Martínez, as well as Aleksandr Vlasov, who also abandoned the Tour after a crash.
“We are also going into the third Grand Tour of the year with great ambitions,” said sports director Rolf Aldag. “We have nominated eight riders with whom we won’t be hiding but want to compete aggressively for the GC. However, we will have to wait and see to what extent we can do this. After all, the crash injuries and five-week break from racing for both Primož and Aleks [Vlasov] were not the ideal preparation for a Grand Tour.”
Roger Adrià, Giovanni Aleotti, Nico Denz, Patrick Gamper, and Florian Lipowitz round out Red Bull’s roster for the Vuelta, where, with Roglič officially confirmed for the start after weeks of uncertainty, the team will have the bookmakers’ favorite for the overall title.
In addition to Kuss, Roglič will also have to take on a very strong multi-pronged UAE Team Emirates attack. If the three-time Vuelta winner can best those and other rivals over three weeks on the Iberian Peninsula, he will match Roberto Heras’s record of four career Vuelta a España wins.
Did we do a good job with this story?