Giro winner Roglic to skip Tour

PARIS

The winner of the Giro d’Italia last month Primoz Roglic will skip the Tour de France this summer, the director of his Jumbo-Visma team has said.

Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard will spearhead Jumbo-Visma during the three-week race starting on July 1.

“I’ll leave Primoz alone for now,” Merijn Zeeman told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

The 33-year-old Slovenian, a three-time winner of the Vuelta a Espana, was a runner-up in the 2020 Tour after a late meltdown.

Roglic indicated after winning the Giro in late-May that it eased the memories of his painful collapse at the Tour three years ago and he hoped to add the only big race missing from his trophy haul.

“Obviously we all know what things are still missing from my palmares trophy haul... We’ll see, I’m not stressed about it. Let’s see what life brings us,” Roglic said after his Giro victory in Rome.

The Dutch team’s sporting director added Roglic’s participation in the Vuelta at the end of August was a “viable option,” as was the Tour of Lombardy in last October.

Roglic will be replaced by Dutch rider Dylan van Baarle on the Tour de France from July 1-23, the only change to the team’s lineup of eight riders for 2022.

Vingegaard will be backed up by Van Baarle, Belgians Wout Van Aert, Tiesj Benoot and Nathan van Hooydonck as well as the American Sepp Kuss and Frenchman Christophe Laporte.