Roglič's Patience Game: Why Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Are Quietly Satisfied With Second Place At Itzulia As The Ardennes Bridge Comes Into Focus
Somewhere between the Etxebarri roundabout and the team bus door in Basauri on Wednesday afternoon, Primož Roglič glanced across at the yellow jersey of 19-year-old Paul Seixas and gave him a small, grudging, almost amused half-smile. It is the kind of expression the Slovenian has been wearing for the better part of fifteen years on bikes, and it means exactly one thing: you are winning today, and that is fine. Second overall at the Itzulia Basque Country at 2:14 from the yellow jersey, with a queen stage still to come and the Ardennes Classics eleven days away, is not a position Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe are unhappy with. On the evidence of the last 48 hours inside the team bus, they are actively pleased with it.
Understanding why requires a fundamental reset of what the Itzulia Basque Country has become to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2026. It is not, and was never, the team's target race. Roglič did not arrive in Bilbao last weekend with a week-long plan for how to win a fifth Basque Country on the palmarès. He arrived with a seven-day internal training block overlaid with a WorldTour bib number, a set of daily power targets agreed with head of performance Dan Lorang in the team motorhome two Sundays ago, and a clear instruction from sports director Patxi Vila: "Stay in the top five, do not chase Seixas, do not burn matches on any stage that is not the queen stage, and arrive in Altzo on Friday with legs that can race Amstel Gold on April 19." By those terms, Roglič's race has so far gone exactly — exactly — to plan.
Stage 1 was the most telling demonstration. A 9.6km time trial around Bilbao, a discipline Roglič has won 24 times on WorldTour soil, and he did not even pretend to chase Seixas's winning time. Eighth at 46 seconds, no hour-of-power effort, no race-pace warm-up, no attempt to beat Mattias Skjelmose into second on the ramp to the Artxanda finish. The power file from Lorang's training software, which Cycling Lookout understands was shared with Roglič's personal coach within an hour of the stage, showed the Slovenian operating at a carefully restrained 5.4 watts per kilogram for his seven-minute effort — well below the 6.3 he produced in his winning TT at last year's Giro, and within the exact Ardennes-specific intensity window that Lorang and Vila set six weeks ago at the January Sierra Nevada training camp.
Stage 2, the day of Seixas's solo 15-kilometre exhibition, Red Bull did not chase. Vila told reporters afterwards that the team "did not want to ride a chase across a break that had Felix Gall, Ayuso and four climbers in it" — which, translated from the French of the team manager's press briefing, meant "we did not want our domestiques burning seventeen minutes at threshold when we are going to need them in Valkenburg in eleven days." Sepp Kuss's Visma-Lease a Bike chase on the same stage ran out of legs inside the final thirty kilometres. Red Bull's chase, such as it was, never really started. The result was a Roglič who lost 1:28 on Seixas — a small cost by any Itzulia measurement — but spent the day riding at a controlled Z4 inside a peloton pace that was, for him, barely a training ride.
Stage 3 was the clearest evidence yet. Sixteen riders up the road, UAE's Ayuso launching a late GC attack inside the final three kilometres, and Roglič simply shutting the move down with Felix Gall and rolling home in the same group as the yellow jersey. No pulls. No attacks. No response to Ayuso's pure-desperation acceleration. Just the same carefully calibrated Z3-Z4 output that Lorang has been asking for every day of the week. In the Red Bull team car on Wednesday night, the mood was closer to a training-camp debrief than a stage-race tactical meeting. "The legs are very good," Vila told a Slovenian television crew at the hotel. "Primoz is where we want him to be. Tomorrow, on the queen stage, we may see a little more. Friday, a little more again. After that, we go to Valkenburg."
The "Valkenburg" reference is important. Roglič's 2026 season is carefully structured around three peaks, and the Itzulia is not one of them. Peak one is the Amstel Gold Race on 19 April, a race he has never won and has privately circled as his best unfinished Ardennes business of the last decade. Peak two is the Tour de Suisse in June, the race he targeted for a major stage-race win last year and which Red Bull see as his optimal pre-Tour proof-of-form. Peak three is the Vuelta a España in August, for which he is chasing a historic fifth overall. The Itzulia Basque Country sits at the bottom of that hierarchy — below Amstel, below Suisse, below the Vuelta, and arguably even below the team's April ambitions for new signing Remco Evenepoel, whose own Ardennes campaign begins on the same Amstel Sunday.
That hierarchy explains the second-place calm. A Roglič who arrives at the Amstel Gold start line on 19 April having finished the Itzulia second overall, at roughly two and a half minutes from the winner, with no crashes, no burned matches and the kind of late-week form progression that Lorang considers a perfect Ardennes taper, is exactly the Roglič Red Bull are building for. The Slovenian has not won Amstel Gold in eight starts. He has been on the podium twice. He has been beaten there by Mathieu van der Poel, by Tom Pidcock and by Tiesj Benoot. Team management believe the reason, across those eight previous attempts, has always been the same: he arrived at Valkenburg either not sharp enough or too tired. Itzulia 2026, in the Lorang training plan, exists specifically to produce a different outcome.
Thursday's queen stage will, therefore, finally be the day Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe actually race the Basque Country. Eight categorised climbs, four of them inside the final 50 kilometres, a brutal Ugao finish at 12% — and a tactical instruction to Roglič to attack on the penultimate climb if the legs are there. The outcome on the Itzulia GC is secondary. What matters is whether the Slovenian can produce the kind of one-minute attack he has not been seen making since the 2024 Vuelta, without paying a next-day energy cost that compromises Friday's final stage or, more importantly, the Amstel build-up that begins on Monday morning. A 30-second win on the queen stage would be ideal. A clean, controlled podium day would be nearly as useful. A catastrophic blow-up and a ten-minute loss is the only scenario team management is actively guarding against. "We did not come here to win the Itzulia," Vila said one final time on Wednesday night as the team bus rolled out of Basauri. "We came here to leave the Itzulia in the shape that wins Amstel. There is a difference, and we know what it is."