Of course, i was talking about first win of the season.
- Mar 15, 2022
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- Jul 16, 2015
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It's becoming difficult for me to gauge Rog's form, I won't lie.
Maybe some people have short memories but I remember back in the cretaceous period there were bike races where riders were paced and then attacked, or launched accelerations/decelerations etc in constant stop/start fashion. Apples and oranges but think back to the Tour de l'Ain 2020 versus Bernal.
Meanwhile nowadays everyone is just sprinting constantly. People say Rog has lost his punch meanwhile I'm watching it thinking "huh, he's permanently sprinting here on Cipressa and Poggio just to keep up!"
It's the speed of the peloton.
Maybe some people have short memories but I remember back in the cretaceous period there were bike races where riders were paced and then attacked, or launched accelerations/decelerations etc in constant stop/start fashion. Apples and oranges but think back to the Tour de l'Ain 2020 versus Bernal.
Meanwhile nowadays everyone is just sprinting constantly. People say Rog has lost his punch meanwhile I'm watching it thinking "huh, he's permanently sprinting here on Cipressa and Poggio just to keep up!"
It's the speed of the peloton.
- Sep 12, 2022
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It's obvious that the current level of the peloton is insane, but it was also in 2024, and he could still win races and even dominate them in some cases. Since then, if we look at the wattage and other data, the overall improvement isn't that significant.
Therefore, if he finds his best form (maybe more diffcult for him now), he can win again, at least on his preferred terrain and against human rivals (everyone except Pogacar and probably Vingegaard). He demonstrated this also last year in the Volta a Catalunya and has a good opportunity to do so in the Itzulia Basque Country against three formidable rivals. Althought, considering each rider's current attributes and the parcours, Primoz might have had it easier with the UAE+Volta combination, and Remco with Tirreno+Itzulia.
Overall, his season opener has been decent. In Tirreno-Adriatico, he was a bit disappointing and rusty, but not terrible. In Milan-Turin, he was the strongest rider after a Pidcock in the form of his life. Yesterday, he was where he was expected to be, somewhere between 4th and 10th strongest rider at the moment of Pogacar's attack, but without a chance. The only thing he could have done better was to shelter himself a bit more during the UAE pace; he was eating wind not fully on the draft of others.
Therefore, if he finds his best form (maybe more diffcult for him now), he can win again, at least on his preferred terrain and against human rivals (everyone except Pogacar and probably Vingegaard). He demonstrated this also last year in the Volta a Catalunya and has a good opportunity to do so in the Itzulia Basque Country against three formidable rivals. Althought, considering each rider's current attributes and the parcours, Primoz might have had it easier with the UAE+Volta combination, and Remco with Tirreno+Itzulia.
Overall, his season opener has been decent. In Tirreno-Adriatico, he was a bit disappointing and rusty, but not terrible. In Milan-Turin, he was the strongest rider after a Pidcock in the form of his life. Yesterday, he was where he was expected to be, somewhere between 4th and 10th strongest rider at the moment of Pogacar's attack, but without a chance. The only thing he could have done better was to shelter himself a bit more during the UAE pace; he was eating wind not fully on the draft of others.
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Van Poppel pulled because Pellizzari was in that group, not everyone is an idiot and working for Pogacar
- Sep 12, 2022
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- Mar 15, 2022
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Exactly. It's not like Pellizzari had any chance winning MSR, but what Van Poppel did was just stupid.
Sure but it's not like Van Poppel pulled without a reason, plus nobody knew what condition Pogacar would be in and Pellizzari basically had the best position possible, directly on his wheel but then idk what he did on Cipressa
- Feb 20, 2012
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Anyone who watched cycling in the last 3 years knew what was about to go down.
I disagree, we didn't know until he got to the front and UAE started pushing the pace
IMHO both form and results are decent at the beginning of this season. As for the wins, racing on highest level, here RBH as a team still has some reserves left in terms of supporting that.
- Feb 20, 2012
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I too watched flat stages in the 2009 Tour thinking "I wonder what Cavendish is gonna try today, maybe he'll go for a long solo today"
Come on... this is not a big mistery waiting to be solved.
Armstrong was 33 when he last won the Tour and he was an absolute beast for almost a decade.
Cadel Evans was 34.
Froome, Wiggins and Geraint Thomas were 32.
Nibali was 30.
Contador was 28.
Roglic is 36 going on 37.
What do you expect from him? Father time is undefeated.
He's just too old. His winning days in big races are behind him and that's ok.
- Apr 13, 2021
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He was 5s behind piddock in torino and only 4s in Sanremo. He's closing the gap. Maybe by liege or the tour he can be ahead.
True. But we don't have to wait that long as at Itzulia there will be a lot of individual quality involved in terms of team leaders. And indeed it seems that Rogla is nearing peak form, that is riding in a margin of 1s, give or take.
- Sep 26, 2020
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Also now that he's raced MSR again, he knows the secret to success for next year is to crash and then attack on Cipressa. Maybe he could even get Danny van Poppel to work for him.
- Jul 16, 2015
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Granted this is a perfectly valid explanation but the falloff between Catalunya 2025 and what followed was a bit of a steep drop. Catalunya last year being a decent follow up on the Vuelta 2024 which he dominated.
- Jan 9, 2023
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And he even led the Giro, even though he supposedly arrived there a little undercooked.
Whatever the case, we haven't seen a single stomp from Rogla since Catalunya and we may never see one again. Arguably he hasn't been in peak form since so we don't really know. Might be that he is still the best gc rider in RBHs squad or 5th best.
Whatever the case, we haven't seen a single stomp from Rogla since Catalunya and we may never see one again. Arguably he hasn't been in peak form since so we don't really know. Might be that he is still the best gc rider in RBHs squad or 5th best.
- Feb 20, 2012
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He put absolute minutes into Del Toro in Milano Sanremo. The diesel engine is growing. The Stomp hath become the RoglGrinder
I feel like Greek Cassandra, I saw it well before it happened.
So I wrote a huge wall of text when he had a disastrous start of the 2024 season. It didn't make a lot of sense that he was all of a sudden many levels worse despite being in an inferior team, when he had such a great end of the 2023 season. In hindsight I can accept that the team didn't get it right until almost the end of the 2024 season so that played a role in his lesser performances. Vuelta was great, don't get me wrong, but Mas and O'Connor are not exactly top tier riders and he was always the big favorite, only caveat was the TdF crash and even then those sort of rivals should not pose a huge threat.
But the signs were there, weren't they? His stomp was pretty weak all season long unless it was against Mas. His climbing was on a similar level, high enough for the Vuelta unipuertos, but didn't make a huge leap like everybody else did (we didn't see him in the Tour long enough to compare, but what we saw didn't scream "he is going to shatter all his personal records"). The autumn classics were a bust but it was understandable at the time, having done Tour + Vuelta with rushed prep due to the multiple crashes that season.
2025 is when the cracks started to really show and the explanations fell short unlike the previous year. His first race wasn't that bad considering that he didn't do altitude, but it was a race with barely any climbing so difficult to gauge. And it seems like the time trial was him or the team messing up things, not a dip in level. Then Volta Catalunya happened and it seemed he was again back on track, second race of the season, coming from altitude, etc. things were looking normal and he seemed to regain some of his old stomp. Doing so against a decent rival like Ayuso gave me a lot of hope that he had finally found his rhythm in the new team and that the Giro win was a done deal. We all know what happened, but again, the signs were there. He wasn't able to stomp a field of strong explosive riders in the few uphill finishes he contended and he never had the chance to show whether his climbing level had improved due to the multiple crashes. I accept that he timed his peak for the last week and that's when he was already done with the race, but I don't think what we saw was very promising.
Anything after Giro 2025 points to a steady decline that had started in 2024 but wasn't obvious until all the other rivals stepped up and he couldn't. I see no other explanation.
Many people argue that he couldn't train well for the Tour last year, but I don't see how this makes sense since he left the Giro at the start of the last week and had plenty of time to recover from the crashes and the antibiotics that he apparently needed (for the gravel crash? I don't think it was ever explained), he had it worse in many of his Vueltas in terms of really narrow window to get a proper prep and managed to regain his top level. Hell, Vingegaard and Evenepoel had horrible crashes that hugely impacted their TdF prep in '24 and still managed to come back stronger and demolish all sorts of climbing records so I don't see why Roglic suffered so much in the '25 Tour and apparently ever since after some "minor" crashes in the Giro that didn't even cause him to abandon until he say "sod off, I'm sick of this" and left the race . That's why an age-related decline is the only thing that makes sense to explain his inability to regain that final % that set him apart from all the other riders that were knocking at his door and claiming to be "the new Roglic"
I still love the guy and I hope he gets a few more wins before he retires, but he doesn't have anything that can work on his favor. Without his old punch he cannot compete with the sort of riders that target one-weekers and hilly classics, and the current GC field is chock full of them. With the level of climbing he's shown since Vuelta'24 he cannot compete with the likes of an Almeida or even Ayuso (let alone his teammates who have clearly surpassed him in the team ranks) so I don't expect him to do well in the Vuelta. And the worst thing of all and what really triggered this post is that he seems to have lost his confidence and ambition; he was perfectly positioned in Cipressa last Saturday and didn't even tried to follow even if he had exploded doing so. The Roglic of old would've gone into the red if there was a chance of winning, but current day Rogla seems to be playing it very safe in terms of not getting involved in bonus seconds sprints, not risking going all-in to see if it sticks etc. I think it all points to his engine being absolutely blown and he either doesn't know what to do with it or the more it happens, the more he doubts himself, and the more his chances of winning something disappear.
I'm usually optimistic when it comes to riders starting the season slowly and seemingly on the wrong foot, there is always time for improvements. But when a rider like Roglic, who was always on top shape, starts to flounder about I think it's game over.
But my biggest wish is that I come back to this post in a few months time and have to admit that I was mistaken and that I underestimated him.
So I wrote a huge wall of text when he had a disastrous start of the 2024 season. It didn't make a lot of sense that he was all of a sudden many levels worse despite being in an inferior team, when he had such a great end of the 2023 season. In hindsight I can accept that the team didn't get it right until almost the end of the 2024 season so that played a role in his lesser performances. Vuelta was great, don't get me wrong, but Mas and O'Connor are not exactly top tier riders and he was always the big favorite, only caveat was the TdF crash and even then those sort of rivals should not pose a huge threat.
But the signs were there, weren't they? His stomp was pretty weak all season long unless it was against Mas. His climbing was on a similar level, high enough for the Vuelta unipuertos, but didn't make a huge leap like everybody else did (we didn't see him in the Tour long enough to compare, but what we saw didn't scream "he is going to shatter all his personal records"). The autumn classics were a bust but it was understandable at the time, having done Tour + Vuelta with rushed prep due to the multiple crashes that season.
2025 is when the cracks started to really show and the explanations fell short unlike the previous year. His first race wasn't that bad considering that he didn't do altitude, but it was a race with barely any climbing so difficult to gauge. And it seems like the time trial was him or the team messing up things, not a dip in level. Then Volta Catalunya happened and it seemed he was again back on track, second race of the season, coming from altitude, etc. things were looking normal and he seemed to regain some of his old stomp. Doing so against a decent rival like Ayuso gave me a lot of hope that he had finally found his rhythm in the new team and that the Giro win was a done deal. We all know what happened, but again, the signs were there. He wasn't able to stomp a field of strong explosive riders in the few uphill finishes he contended and he never had the chance to show whether his climbing level had improved due to the multiple crashes. I accept that he timed his peak for the last week and that's when he was already done with the race, but I don't think what we saw was very promising.
Anything after Giro 2025 points to a steady decline that had started in 2024 but wasn't obvious until all the other rivals stepped up and he couldn't. I see no other explanation.
Many people argue that he couldn't train well for the Tour last year, but I don't see how this makes sense since he left the Giro at the start of the last week and had plenty of time to recover from the crashes and the antibiotics that he apparently needed (for the gravel crash? I don't think it was ever explained), he had it worse in many of his Vueltas in terms of really narrow window to get a proper prep and managed to regain his top level. Hell, Vingegaard and Evenepoel had horrible crashes that hugely impacted their TdF prep in '24 and still managed to come back stronger and demolish all sorts of climbing records so I don't see why Roglic suffered so much in the '25 Tour and apparently ever since after some "minor" crashes in the Giro that didn't even cause him to abandon until he say "sod off, I'm sick of this" and left the race . That's why an age-related decline is the only thing that makes sense to explain his inability to regain that final % that set him apart from all the other riders that were knocking at his door and claiming to be "the new Roglic"
I still love the guy and I hope he gets a few more wins before he retires, but he doesn't have anything that can work on his favor. Without his old punch he cannot compete with the sort of riders that target one-weekers and hilly classics, and the current GC field is chock full of them. With the level of climbing he's shown since Vuelta'24 he cannot compete with the likes of an Almeida or even Ayuso (let alone his teammates who have clearly surpassed him in the team ranks) so I don't expect him to do well in the Vuelta. And the worst thing of all and what really triggered this post is that he seems to have lost his confidence and ambition; he was perfectly positioned in Cipressa last Saturday and didn't even tried to follow even if he had exploded doing so. The Roglic of old would've gone into the red if there was a chance of winning, but current day Rogla seems to be playing it very safe in terms of not getting involved in bonus seconds sprints, not risking going all-in to see if it sticks etc. I think it all points to his engine being absolutely blown and he either doesn't know what to do with it or the more it happens, the more he doubts himself, and the more his chances of winning something disappear.
I'm usually optimistic when it comes to riders starting the season slowly and seemingly on the wrong foot, there is always time for improvements. But when a rider like Roglic, who was always on top shape, starts to flounder about I think it's game over.
But my biggest wish is that I come back to this post in a few months time and have to admit that I was mistaken and that I underestimated him.
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