‘I find it very strange’ – Primoz Roglic’s decision to abandon Tour de France and teammate Jonas Vingegaard questioned

Primoz Roglic’s decision to abandon this year’s Tour de France has led to raised eyebrows, not least from Eurosport’s Breakaway team.

The Jumbo-Visma rider took the decision to pull out of the race ahead of Stage 15 ‘to allow my injuries to heal’ following a crash on Stage 5.

It is expected that the Slovenian will focus on his recovery ahead of the Vuelta a Espana in August as he looks to win the General Classification for a fourth year in a row.

However, with teammate Jonas Vingegaard currently in the yellow jersey, and Roglic essentially working as a domestique, Dan Lloyd questioned the logic of Roglic’s exit and his personal motivations with Jumbo so close to glory.

“I think it’s going to be a reasonably big blow,” he said of the impact it will have on the team. “But I don’t think that they will have too many problems over the last week of the race, just given the strength of the rest of the riders that still remain within it.

“I’d be interested to know why that decision was made at this point, whether it is purely physical, and he hasn’t recovered from the injuries from that stage five crash, or whether it’s more psychological that he didn’t come into this race to help somebody else to win it.

“He came here to win it himself, and I’m just wondering whether he’s thinking: ‘I’m not fully recovered. I’m not really enjoying working for somebody else. And I want to focus on my own objectives later this season’.

“It looks to me like he wants to focus on winning a fourth straight Vuelta a Espana”.

Robbie McEwen agreed and also believes Jumbo-Visma should have made the Tour the priority, keeping Roglic in the team in order to continue to support Vingegaard’s charge and maximise their chances of success.

“He’s done what’s been asked of him what he’s needed to do so far,” he said. “I still find it quite strange that they’re willing to let him pull out of the race.

“When you look at yesterday, the work that he did on that final climb, he split the field to pieces.

“To let a guy go home at this point, when you’ve got the yellow jersey in the team, no matter his standing within the team that ‘yeah, he can come back and win the Vuelta’, at this point, with the yellow jersey within the team for the Tour de France, I find it a really strange decision to let him go home.

“Okay, healing from injuries, he’s not quite himself, but he’s still really, really good and I’d be doing everything to try and keep him in the tour if I was the team boss”.

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