Despite painful defeats in the past, Primoz Roglic firmly believes in his first victory in the Tour de France.
He doesn’t even rate his Slovenian compatriot Tadej Pogacar, winner of the last two Tour of France, as unbeatable. “We have many drivers with very high quality. Now we have to work well together. We firmly believe that we can beat Tadej,” said the 32-year-old in Copenhagen on Wednesday. In the Danish capital, the 109th tour begins on Friday with an individual time trial.
Roglic was pushed to second place by Pogacar in 2020 on the penultimate stage. Last year, the Jumbo-Visma captain had to retire after a fall and watched Pogacar win by a comfortable margin.
At least in the first phase of this year’s tour, Roglic has to do without his sports director Merijn Zeeman. The 43-year-old announced on Wednesday that he was ill with Covid-19 and would only join the tour entourage after he had recovered. “Fortunately, I’m still negative,” said Roglic. “All we can do is play by the rules and protect as best we can. Everything else is out of our hands.”