Primož Roglič may be a three-time Grand Tour winner, but the Slovenian has also suffered his fair share of bad luck on three week races in more recent times. And now it looks like that bad luck is following him into the Giro d'Italia, with more problems today for his team.
A bout of Covid-19 in the team has already claimed some of its riders and now Jan Tratnik, a key domestique, has suffered a crash in his last ride before the start of the race tomorrow. Jumbo Visma initiall said he had suffered a knee injury and had been taken to hospital but has since confirmed he is out of the race.
"Unfortunately we have to substitute a fifth rider for Giro d'Italia due to the traffic accident with Jan Tratnik earlier today. He will be replaced by the talented Tom Gloag," the team said.
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Jumbo Visma had already lost world TT champion Tobias Foss and Robert Gesink from its Giro team due to Covid-19. It drafted in former world TT champion Rohan Dennis and Jos Van Emden as replacement riders. However, Van Emden then came down with Covid-19 himself and had to be replaces by Sam Oomen, who dashed to Italy to be with the team in time for the start of the race tomorrow.
Roglič, a three-time winner of La Vuelta, crashed on last year's Tour de France and was eventually forced out of the race due to his injuries, some 12 months after a crash forced him out of Tour 2021. But after last year's withdrawal from the French Grand Tour he tried to recover and went on to start La Vuelta later in the season.
While he began that race undercooked - as he was unable to train due to his Tour injuries - be slowly gained time on race leader Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) just after the midway point. However, at the end of stage 16 he crashed heavily - after attacking and gaining more time on Evenepoel.
Roglič was unable to start stage 17 the following day and Evenepoel easily went on to win the race overall. The Giro was expected to be a rematch between Evenepoel and Roglič. However, while Jumbo Visma had a much better team going into the race than Soudal QuickStep, the last minute changes Jumbo Visma has been forced into undermines that team advantage somewhat.
