The Vuelta is closed for Primoz Roglic (Trbovlje, 32 years old) and from cycling emerges a current of affection and sympathy towards a champion who made himself, an athlete with a giant soul who came from a world as unknown as the jumps of trampoline. The last image of the triple winner of the last Vueltas is devastating: lying against the fence, the jersey open, the blood running down his chest, his elbows, his leg, the masseur spraying him with water to remove the black asphalt stains… Roglic he did not open his mouth, one more fall in his extensive record, swallowed the pain and left until the next one. “He falls too much, I can’t find an explanation,” says former cyclist Miguel Ángel Iglesias, now an analyst on television and in the press. An argument to explain this propensity to pain is that Roglic approaches fear or risk from another point of view. He was a trampoline jumper, a very risky profession in which falls can be more dramatic in the flight through the air until putting the skis in the snow. Roglic became fond of ski jumping in his town, Trbovlje, because of his country’s tradition in this sport. His father worked in a nearby factory and Roglic himself was employed in his youth as a cleaner in a shopping center. It is hard to imagine him now dressed in the gray jumpsuit of the worker responsible for cleaning the escalators and the building, so focused on the task with the headphones as companions in the lonely night. Related News Tour of Spain standard No Urán imposes his smile on the Monastery of Tentudía José Carlos Carabias Sin Roglic, tie between the favorites in the second-class port and dominance of Evenepoel The Slovenian went through this learning of life before devoting himself to the sport of the snow. Without great results as a trampoline jumper, the constant in his life, a fall, pushed him to change his life. Roglic’s big shot dressed in a light blue suit, red bib number and Audi advertising before crashing into the snow reminds us that for the Slovenian there is no adversity so great that willpower and sacrifice cannot overcome. On board his enigmatic personality, always close to useful simplicity, Roglic imagined a new life as a cyclist. He was 22 years old, an age that in cycling conduct manuals seems excessive to start riding a bicycle. The triple winner of the Vuelta embarked on a rough road, full of difficulties. He dedicated himself to sending emails to the generic accounts of the professional teams with a text that the journalist Kate Wagner, from the magazine ‘Bycling’, revealed. “What do I need to do or be in order to join his team or try to be a professional racer? What is needed? ”, Asked the former jumper with candor as a flag. At the age when Pogacar, Evenepoel or Egan Bernal are already cycling stars and win the best races, 23 years old, Roglic disputed his first cycling event. “I didn’t know how to put on and take off my clothes, how to eat, how to drink… how to pee from the bike. I needed to learn very very fast. And yes, I fell many times at the aid stations, ”said the Slovenian, an alien in that colony of seasoned runners who elbowed, sought position, braked or ate during the competition. Roglic did not take his hands off the handlebars for 178 kilometers in that debut. But he was a brute force. He won the Tour of Slovenia, the Tour of Azerbaijan. Franz Massen, from Jumbo’s coaching staff, tested him and he was clear. “We have a Ferrari.” This is how Roglic has learned the codes of cycling, based on blows. Falls in the Paris-Nice that he had won, in the Dauphine in which he was the leader, a defeat against Pogacar in the 2020 Tour in the penultimate stage, the fall of the last Tour in which he placed his shoulder using a fan as a support . And the penultimate, that blow in Tomares when he cut Evenepoel’s time. A learning based on blows.
