35 and still going strong: Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe watches Roglic thrive

While the Flemish were engaged in their showdown during the Belgian spring classics, a beautiful race was taking place elsewhere in Europe. In Spain, riders competed in the Tour of Catalonia, a highly regarded WorldTour race. Last week, we saw many talented cyclists show off their skills, but the ultimate winner was the 35-year-old Primoz Roglic. The Slovenian won two stages and the GC of the Spanish race, giving his team plenty of reasons to be satisfied, as can be read in Rouleur.

Despite a mediocre start for Roglic and the doubts he had before the start of the Tour of Catalonia, the 35-year-old rider turned out to be in excellent shape. But at Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe, they are keeping an eye on things. "This victory does not mean that Primoz is now the top favorite for the Giro d'Italia." Roglic will start on May 9 in Albania, where he will try to win his second pink jersey. He will 'come home' in the 14th stage, which finishes in Slovenia.

The German team was certainly not surprised. "My personal opinion is that most riders have 10-12 really good years, or something like that, although a few can last a little longer. Primož finished last season well in the Vuelta with some very good races, and nothing tells us that his performance levels should be going down. At the end of the day, we can't change his age, but there is no conversation about it. We just focus on our daily business and on being as good as we can, no matter the age," said sports director Christian Henn.

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Roglic won Sunday's final stage

Roglic showed his strength in the final stage of the Tour of Catalonia

And he showed that he is still the same old Roglic by soloing to the stage and GC win in the final stage of the Tour of Catalonia. "I want to decide a race in the mountains or the climbs.But I had to do something. I always say that Catalunya is an honest race where the legs do the talking, but I really didn’t have a great feeling until the last stage. It’s hard to plan the final stage and I didn’t really think about it before. I just had to do it and it was fun."

His attack allowed him to beat Juan Ayuso, one of his main competitors in the upcoming years for the grand tours. "The young guys are pushing really hard. Every year is a new year to confirm your position, your status in the bunch and at the end of the year perhaps there are some new guys who’ve joined that club and it might be a Big Five or Six. But with Jai [Hindley] in the [2022] Giro and Primož in the Vuelta, we have shown that we are able to win a Grand Tour, and in the last couple of years, not so many teams have done that," Vila says proudly.

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Can Roglic win the Giro again?

Bad Tour was the preparation for winning the Vuelta, according to Ralph Denk

Manager Ralph Denk is also enormously proud of this and praises Roglic. "If you have a relationship, you need bad days to really find out if it’s a good relationship, and we had bad days during the Tour but we came back stronger. Setbacks help to create a stronger relationship and we did that very well in the Vuelta." Now the German also firmly believes that the Slovenian can win the Giro d'Italia for the second time in his career. "We believed that he started late and that he’s not so burnt," the German said. "It’s a fucking hard endurance sport, and hopefully – hopefully, but nobody knows it – his engine burns a bit longer. We’re quite optimistic."

He added another victory to an impressive series with his victory in the Tour of Catalonia. He has now won a WorldTour stage race for eight years in a row: only Miguel Indurain has won in more consecutive seasons, with nine. He has also won 17 of all 22 WorldTour stage races. He has also worn the most leader's jerseys in stage races in the 21st century: no fewer than 140 jerseys, more than names such as Chris Froome, Alejandro Valverde, Tadej Pogacar, and Vincenzo Nibali. So Rogla is far from worn out.

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