Primož Roglič has abandoned the Tour de France after crashing heavily yesterday and losing time.
He was examined by doctors last night and this morning, his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team announced, and the decision was taken to pull the Slovenian out of the race.
"Primož Roglič underwent careful examination by our medical team after yesterday’s stage and again this morning," the team announced on X. "The decision has been taken that he will not start today, to focus on upcoming goals.
"We wish you a speedy recovery, Primož," the statement added.
Roglič had crashed with 10km to go after an Astana Qazaqstan rider collided with a traffic island on the approach to the stage finish at Villeneuve-sur-Lot. Typifying his luck in the race over the past few editions, Roglič was one of the very few to be caught up in the fall.
He finished 2:27 in arrears on stage winner Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty), sporting bloody road rash and torn up clothes.
It saw him drop from fourth to sixth on GC, 4:42 behind yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), with any hopes of winning the race overall in tatters.
“Well, it’s terrible obviously, a leader crashing and after yesterday also,” his team DS Rolf Aldag said after the stage. “He came to the finish line but he lost some time. That was not good, certainly we wanted to avoid that. It’s never good, it’s never nice and it certainly wasn’t the plan.”
The past four seasons have been a frustrating and sorry tale of woe for Roglič at the Tour de France. In 2020 he had yellow snatched away by Pogačar on the penultimate-day time trial to Planche des Belles Filles, when it looked as though he had it in the bag.
Both 2021 and 2022 saw him crash hard in the opening week, ultimately forcing him to pull out of the race; while last year he did not go to the race.
The 34-year-old has changed teams for this season, with a renewed focus at the relaunched and renamed Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe outfit. He showed his mettle at the Critérium du Dauphiné Tour warm-up race, winning two stages and the overall.
But in this Tour it looked as though Roglič's aims were slowly falling by the wayside, with Pogačar, long-time nemesis Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and even Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) falling into the role of protagonists. Even before he crashed Roglič was 2:15 down.
Things could have changed in the key final week. But we'll never know – for disaster, it seems, has struck again.
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