"Remco is a special guy"; Primoz Roglic shares his first thoughts on Evenepoel joining Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe

Etten-Leur was delighted with the presence of Roglic, who enjoyed taking it all in in Brabant. “We really wanted to have a Grand Tour winner at the start. Tadej Pogacar, with whom we were also in contact, doesn't ride criteriums, so it came down to Simon Yates and Roglic, last year's winner of the Vuelta. We decided to go for Roglic, and he was keen too.”

The Slovenian himself confirmed this. “I was already pleasantly surprised by the large crowd here last time, so I'm happy to be back.” He then cycled on in typical Roglic fashion straight into the arms of the two journalists present, with a big smile on his face. “I'm not doing the Vuelta, so I was able to come to Etten-Leur. I'm happy to be back in the Netherlands.”

Of course, the Evenepoel question followed fairly quickly. ‘Remco is a special guy who has already won many big races. Hopefully we can achieve great things together,’ said the Slovenian, who finished eighth in this year’s Tour de France.

Whether he will ride alongside Evenepoel in next year's Tour is still a long way off for Roglic. “We've only just finished this year's Tour... It's still a long way off to decide on next season's Tour. So I don't know yet whether I'll be riding it. First things first.”

Evenepoel could prove to be a decisive factor in the battle against Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar. “We need to explore how we can compete with those guys, but it's clear that we still have some work to do to close the gap,” concluded Roglic, who the organization then instructed to proceed with his introductory lap.