'It's possible' - Primož Roglič and Jan Tratnik on reuniting and why they think the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe star can win another Giro d'Italia

"It's possible." Primož Roglič is never one to beat about the bush when it comes to stating his goals, or anything else for that matter – and as for winning the Giro d'Italia this May, his reply is no different to when Cyclingnews first asked him about conquering the maglia rosa back in 2019.

The 2019 Giro was Roglič's first-ever Grand Tour as a team leader. Since then he's conquered the Vuelta a España a record-equalling four times, the Giro once, in 2023, and won a multitude of one-day and week-long stage races. In the process, he's become a giant of the sport – and the starting favourite to win the corsa rosa this year, too.

By having a virtually race-free spring, but with one major victory in the Volta a Catalunya this March before moving straight on to taking part in the Giro d'Italia, at 35, Roglič confirms he's trying something of a fresh approach. But he's already noticed one benefit. The lack of racing this year, he agrees, has made him 'hungrier to win'.

"Yes, for sure," he told Cyclingnews late this April, before pointing out with his typical humour – so dry and self-deprecating that sometimes you can't tell if he's pulling your leg or not –  that as one of the veterans, "I have to save my energy too, you know, I'm old." Then he points out with another wry laugh, "I cannot be everywhere any more. I have to manage things well."

Right now at 'Camp Roglič' on the Teide in the Canary Islands, the mood has been markedly upbeat, despite this being his second lengthy bout of altitude training of the year. ("All good, everything beautiful, always sunny. Wind? That depends where you stand," is Roglič's succinct analysis of how he's got on training and staying several weeks at altitude high on Teide's exposed, barren and empty moonscape). 

It's surely partly because of how well he got on in Catalunya, but even more because he's been training on the Teide with his longstanding friend, compatriot and new teammate since 2025 at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Jan Tratnik. 

The 35-year-old will be racing with Roglič for the first time in the Giro. "It should have happened in 2023, but a car ran me down when training just before, so the first thing is to get there to the start okay," Tratnik says with a smile – and their mutual pleasure that they will be tackling their first Grand Tour together since the Vuelta in 2023 is palpable all the way through the interview.

The jokes and good memories abound, too, such as when Cyclingnews asks Roglič about the two glasses of cherry juice he reportedly has as a recovery drink during stage races – "I'd prefer beer" is his pithy answer, "but maybe not during the Giro". "He hasn't offered me any yet," Tratnik sparks back when asked if he's also a fan of cherry juice. Then when we go down memory lane and they are asked about their first recollections as racers back when to 2012 when they crossed paths at the the tiny Radenska squad in Slovenia, they both open up with some amusing anecdotes.

"For sure, I remember the first training ride when Primož joined us," Tratnik, a fourth-year pro at the time, says. "We did a recon of the Tour of Slovenia route and Primož still raced as an amateur amateur so he just joined us for that training ride. But it didn't end well because during the training ride, he dropped us all, so we all ended up asking 'Who is this guy?'

"The start of the year was crazy, to me they [the Radenska Conti squad] looked like next-level professionals, the kind of guys I wanted to be," Roglič says, laughingly recalling about how daunted and out of his depth he had felt.

"I just remember that year we did one training ride – I don't know if Jan was there, it was in February but it was still cold and I actually didn't know what to wear, or even how to sort out my bike properly.

"So I just put on all the clothes I possibly could, whatever I had, and then I went there. When I got there, I remember the guys maybe just had socks over their shoes and that was it, small things like that that looked really cool and professional. As for me, I'd just put on 'full' – I was wearing whatever I could find at home, I put all of it on, and I wore that!

"Then immediately when we started riding, I was already at the back, not allowed to do anything, just sitting at the back of the group. Fuck, I remember it was 30kph and I was exploding, thinking 'I can't hold this' and 'Why am I doing this? Maybe it's not such a good idea."

Fortunately for cycling fans, given how important a part of pro cycling he's been since then, rather than peel off from the ride and head home Roglič stuck it out. So much so, in fact, that having decided it was a good idea, he resolutely continued on his pathway all the way to professionals, first with Adria Mobil in 2013, then with LottoNL-Jumbo from 2016 and now, from 2024 with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, all the while picking up 91 career wins to date.

But after all that time, to think that Roglič was once the amateur kid who dropped all the pros, despite his thinking he had worn too many clothes to the training ride, he is now the lead favourite for the Giro d'Italia is one those wonderful narrative arcs that sometimes it feels like only cycling can produce. Particularly when the guy that watched him ride away from the pros way back in 2012 somewhere in Slovenia will now be his key lieutenant this May, and beyond.

On top of that, as Roglič points out, the Giro is like the duo's home Grand Tour, being so close to Slovenia, and it's actually visiting their country this year in the second week, too. In the 2023 Giro, everybody could see when powered towards the pink jersey on the final TT how much of a rapturous reception he was getting from Slovenian fans lining the roadside. 

The same happened in 2024, too, of course, when Tadej Pogačar confirmed his hold on the Giro on the second last day at Bassano de Grappa. In both cases, the race was relatively close to Slovenia on the Italian side of the border. So the kind of welcome the Giro will receive when it crosses over on stage 14 this year, particularly if Roglič is back in pink, can only be imagined.

"From my side, this is just a pleasure," Roglič says about his fourth Giro start, and almost regardless of how the race pans out. "It's the first of the Grand Tours, one of the biggest races of the whole year and doing it together with my friend and teammate is even nicer. So yeah, I'm just looking forward to the challenges to come."

It's worth remembering that while 2019 effectively kicked off his Grand Tour GC career - he placed third in the Giro that year, before going on to conquer the Vuelta  - Roglič has been a model of consistency in Grand Tour victories. 2022 has been the only year he's failed to win at least one, when he crashed out of the Vuelta in the third week just as he starting to make inroads on Remco Evenepoel's lead. 

But in 2024, other team sources have said in other interviews, there was a period of adaptation to his new Red Bull squad that took a while to complete. The plus side is, again, in 2025, as after nearly a decade with Visma-Lease a Bike under its previous sponsor titles, now he has had much more time to get used to being on board a different ship – and captaining it, too.

"Yes, for sure," Roglič confirms. "Although when Red Bull came on board, it felt like a new team again, because there were so many new faces. But at least the guys I knew were already here, and that saves energy, it helps you it feels more like home if you can call it like that. After you've been there for one year, you're more relaxed."

The team captain

Roglič's own past in the Giro is crucial but Tratnik himself has a special relationship with the Giro for several reasons, too. It was where he won his only Grand Tour stage to date, back in 2020 against no less a figure than Ben O'Connor, from a long, unpredictably big – 28 riders – third week break. As he reminds Cyclingnews, "that was in the COVID year, so the whole season was really 'rock'n'roll', I didn't know what to expect.

"It was nice to take that last opportunity in the Giro because all the next stages were really hard ones. It also happened quite close to Slovenia, we actually went through it on the stage and many fans were there, so that was a good memory." 

Yet again, too, the Tratnik-Roglič connection emerged, even though Roglič was not in the Giro that year. "On the day I won, Primož won in the Vuelta," – the opening stage of that year's COVID-delayed race, finishing on the perilously rain-soaked Basque climb of Arrate – "so that was nice too." 

Tratnik's role in the 2025 Giro is one of team captain, he explains, meaning repeat breakaways like in 2020 are at least initially off the menu, but other challenges have taken its place. "I'll organise the team during the race, help contacts between riders and sport directors and read the race to see what will happen, to execute actions and keep everything under control for as long as I'm there.

"I think I'm the guy who can do a lot of flat, medium, hilly stages, tricky ones, but anyway for the high mountains, we have a really strong lineup too: three to four great climbers, and the rest of us will work more on flat and the medium-flat. So that's mainly going to be my job."

The return of the long-distance attack

Then there's the main man himself. Last year it missed nobody's attention that rather than using his tried-and-tested Grand Tour winning strategy of attacking close to the summit of mountain tops and snatching bonus seconds and small, last-kilometre gaps to carve out a lead, when it came to conquering the 2024 Vuelta a España Roglič handled things rather differently. 

In his most recent of five Grand Tour victories, the Red Bull star had to claw back so much time on unexpected leader Ben O'Connor that Roglič adopted, almost as a matter of obligation, a longer-distance attacking campaign. 

He had done the same previously in the Vuelta on a couple of stages, most notably back in 2021 in the Lagos de Covadonga, when he attacked with Egan Bernal to seal the victory. But despite Covadonga being one of Roglič's most memorable rides ever in his career, it remained something of a one-off tactic whereas in the Vuelta 2024 he used the tactic much more frequently. Then, in the Volta a Catalunya, Roglič repeated the same long-distance move, and to devastating effect.

While his first race of the season at the Volta ao Algarve had veered abruptly between a strong showing on stage 2 at the Alto de Foia and a lacklustre final time trial, in the Volta a Catalunya on the roads through Montjuic Park in central Barcelona, Roglič turned in a jaw-dropping 30-kilometre move, that left one of his key Giro rivals, Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), reeling and and overall victory in the bag, too. 

That continued use of this additional weapon in Roglič's armoury will likely have given his rivals much food for thought, particularly when it also gave Roglič exactly the best result he could have wanted, coming into the Giro, too. After all, if he could do that in a race like Catalunya where the GC victory was, at least initially, not the definitive goal, who knows what he can now do in May with more altitude training? 

"Yeah, like I already said there, it was beautiful, because I did Algarve, then I went to training camp, then Catalunya," Roglič recalls. "So it was just nice to see I had trained well up here on Teide, and the level was high. I was good, so it was really beautiful, actually, to take that one.

"I mean, although, at the end, it doesn't change at all the result of Giro or whatever, in that case – Catalunya is already in the pocket."

'We shouldn't be afraid of anybody'

Catalunya was also the week-long WorldTour race Roglič won in 2023 prior to triumphing in the Giro that year, which is an encouraging precedent for the Slovenian veteran 24 months later. But the most encouraging element about winning the Giro two years ago, he agrees, is that it's proved he can do it. Basically, he knows he has already shown he had the wherewithal to come through to triumph in what was a very cagy, topsy-turvy race, where Roglič himself came close to disaster thanks to a mechanical in the final, crunch, mountain time trial on Monte Lussari.

Roglič confirms he can also also draw inspiration from other past milestone moments in his career arising in the Italian Grand Tour. The Giro was the first Grand Tour he saw as an amateur on the roadside, for one thing – first heading across the border to watch Rigoberto Uran win an Alpine stage in 2013, then going to a nearby Slovenian town where the teams were staying that night and crossing paths with Cadel Evans. 

The Giro was also where he first raced as a Grand Tour leader, too and took his first Grand Tour race lead, in the opening stage of 2019 after winning the ferociously difficult uphill Bologna TT at Madonna di San Luca. Last but not least, the Giro was where he took his first Grand Tour stage, also a time trial, back in 2016.

"All of that gives me a bit of motivation," Roglič agrees, "but I try to find that extra motivation in everything. I try to find it every day, something to make it a bit nicer, and when I'm doing the Giro, definitely that motivation is there. 

"Sometimes it feels crazy that I'm even there, but then the second feeling I have is it's good, whatever. I'll be racing there with Jan and we'll definitely do a good race."

As for whether he win it, Roglič confirms he has exactly the same answer as back in 2019 before he started. "It's true, it's possible – for everyone, that's the good point of it. But the worst – or not so good point – is that we start from zero. So we all have to prove ourselves – and the best one wins."

It can't be forgotten, either, that Roglič won't be the only top name in Red Bull's Giro roster. The  presence of a former Giro winner and podium finisher like Jai Hindley together with other major heavyweights like Dani Martínez, second last year and some notable up-and-coming Italian climbers such as Giulio Pellizzari will allow Bora to play a very offensive game with multiple options should they need to, Tratnik points out. But it goes without saying, too, that Roglič is the undisputed trump card.

"The team will be really strong in the Giro," Tratnik concludes. "The mountain support is really strong and for the flat and hilly stages we have a really good group that's well connected. I'm really looking forward to racing there, and I know I know how much easier it is when you have a roster of eight strong guys."

"We shouldn't be afraid of anybody, we've been working every day here for the Giro. And now it's time we pin on the numbers and start racing."

As for the final victory? Well, to quote someone who knows quite a lot about winning it, it's possible.