The fog was so thick that the camera could only make out the riders up close. The two in front were wearing yellow, the rider at the rear was wearing red -- all three jerseys with “Jumbo Visma” printed on the back.
Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard, both winners of the year’s grand tours, led the way up The Angliru climb on stage 17 of the 2023 Vuelta de Espana. They were pulling for their teammate, Sepp Kuss – the virtual leader of the GC.
They had found themselves in a miracle situation – by stage 17, Kuss was first in general classification, Vingegaard second, Roglic third, and they were alone. The three could work together to bring Kuss to the top step, with the other two making up the Jumbo Visma grand tour podium sweep – the first time a team would sweep the podium of a grand tour since 1966. If a Jumbo rider won, it would also be a historic first in the sport, where a team would win all three grand tours within the same year.
Roglic just had to be selfish. He attacked Kuss and Vingegaard with just less than two kilometers to the finish. Vingegaard stayed glued to Roglic’s wheel, and Kuss was unable to follow.
Kuss – who had helped both Vingegaard and Roglic in their grand tour wins just months prior -- was dropped.
Photo courtesy of Eurosport
And that’s just how Roglic acts – he’s a cutthroat team leader. The cutthroat part is a good quality – even Kuss thinks so. “Winners have cold blood,” he said after stage 18. “And I don’t have that.” But the selfish part – that’s where it’s dicey.
The selfish part means Roglic won’t be a team player; he won’t work for others. He’s just got to be in the team leader position and won’t settle for anything else. And now that the Jumbo team has plans for Kuss to take over the leadership position at next year’s Tour de France and other races, it means Roglic will be taking his skills to other teams – as his transfer to Bora-hansgrohe was made official earlier this month.
“I think it’s better for everyone that he’s on a different team,” said Kuss. “Now he can go to a team and feel that support that the feels he deserves and has everyone behind him."
So will we see Roglic succeed over at Bora-hansgrohe? Likely not.
Bora-hansgrohe simply doesn’t have that support for Roglic that he left behind at Jumbo Visma. They’ve got winner of the 2022 Giro d’Italia in Jai Hindley, Nils Politt who is a great one-day racer, and Bob Jungels, who’s in the late stages of his career at 35 years-old and might be Roglic’s most notable domestique for the 2024 season. Other than those big names, Bora’s got very few riders who can feed Roglic’s need to be a successful GC leader.
His best chance at seeing another grand tour win was staying with the Jumbo Visma crew and simply being patient – he didn’t have to be the team leader for every grand tour. He could have worked for Kuss as a super-domestique on one grand tour (like Kuss has for Roglic so many times before) and then be aided in a following grand tour. It’s an agreement that’s quite common in the sport. “I help you in one race, you help me in another.” “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”
Vingegaard, who is now a two-time Tour de France champion, thanks to Kuss’ help back in July, was fine being a workhorse for the American at this year’s Vuelta, saying “I obviously think it would be greedy to go for the win. I can’t see why I should go for the win when [Kuss] has done so much for me.”
With that, it’s evident that Roglic was the loose cannon of Jumbo’s 2023 Vuelta.
Looking forward, Bora-hansgrohe’s investment into Roglic as a team leader won’t pay off unless they can find some big names to pull him at the grand tours.
If they don’t, we will just see
Roglic fail as a team leader at Bora and fade into retirement… unless he can somehow
force himself to become a team player or domestique for newcomers after his
career as a GC leader peaks…
Comments
Post a Comment