Primoz Roglic delivers classic Roglic interview, sets sights on "real conversations and real goals" in 2026

Looking back at Roglic's season, we see an excellent spring. Ahead of the Giro, the Slovenian competed in the Tour of the Algarve, where he finished eighth, and won the Tour of Catalonia thanks to two stage victories. The Giro then turned out to be a disappointment, as he withdrew in stage sixteen after several crashes.

The focus then shifted to the Tour, where Roglic played an interesting role. Working with teammate Florian Lipowitz didn't seem like an option, but attacking early in the tough mountain stage was. The Slovenian eventually finished eighth in Paris. In the fall, he finished eleventh at the World Championships, fifth in the Giro dell'Emilia, and 22nd in the Tour of Lombardy.

"A classic Roglic season, let's put it that way," Roglic himself concludes to the Slovenian Siol. "I definitely wanted more. I would be lying if I said I was satisfied after all the training and effort, but the results are what they are. My level was solid, I achieved what I could, or a little more, but the others were a little faster," he said in his typical Roglic style.

And that's why the Slovenian expects next year to be even faster. “For sure! I've already called the peloton MotoGP. The speeds are really incredible, amazing,” he says, comparing cycling in 2025 to motor racing. Age won't help Roglic in that regard, as he turns 36 at the end of this month.

He won three times this year, including two stage victories that secured him the overall victory in the Tour of Catalonia. Yet Roglic seems most satisfied with completing the Tour. “I haven't seen Paris in a while, yes. But my Tour can be considered a success or a failure. It depends on your perspective,” laughs the veteran in his typical manner.

In that Tour, he took his chances to finish on the podium, but ultimately ended up in eighth place. Teammate Lipowitz did finish in an impressive third place, and next year, Remco Evenepoel will join the team as one of the leaders. “Now that the season is over, we need to sit down together and think about what we're going to do next year and how we're going to do it,” says Roglic.

“We have to outline a program with this revamped team,” the Slovenian continued. “Last year, when I joined, it was new. This year, with the arrival of Red Bull, it has changed even further. Next week, when these training camps start, I still have a lot of work to do to get to know the new faces as well as possible.”

The Slovenian is optimistic about the arrival of the Belgian. “It's basically a good thing. For me, it means I can perhaps take a step back, if I may say so, from all that responsibility and everything outside of cycling. Now we have a younger rider that everyone can count on. I hope that I will have a little more peace and freedom.”

“And ultimately also in terms of cycling itself,” says Roglic, who expects Evenepoel to be very well received by his new team. “I'm saying this very casually, because I haven't met Remco yet, we don't know each other very well personally, but I think he's an asset to all of us.”

So Roglic will be there, but didn't the Slovenian consider a transfer when Evenepoel's arrival was made official? “I haven't really talked about it myself; everyone is talking about it. If you had asked me, I would have said that my contract still has a year to run,” he says, as down-to-earth as ever.

With his 36th birthday approaching, the time to win the Tour seems to be slowly slipping away. So will Roglic focus on other goals next year? "I don't know, we have to sit down and think carefully about what is possible and what is not. Above all, I want real things. Real conversations and real goals. We will sit down with our team leaders and discuss what we can achieve next year."