"Red Bull Management Must Get Tired Of Primož Roglič — Completely Idiotic" — Slovenian Veteran Under Fire For Tour De Romandie 2026 Stage 2 Sit-Up, Two Minutes Conceded On A Day Thirty-One Riders Finished On Pogačar's Time
Saturday morning Sion. Forty-eight hours after Primož Roglič sat up on the closing drag into Vucherens and conceded more than two minutes to a 31-rider front group that had not been forced to race especially hard in the closing 6km, the post-stage debate inside Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe has spilled into print. The Slovenian, who started Stage 2 only a handful of seconds adrift of the GC lead, ended it more than two minutes back, his outright price stretched out beyond the closing-stage TT's reach, and his role inside the squad — for the second time in twelve months — openly questioned by commentators who, until very recently, had been firmly in his corner.
The toughest framing came from Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld, writing in his post-stage column: "Red Bull management must get tired of Primož Roglič. Completely idiotic." The criticism centres less on the lost time than on the manner of the loss. Stage 2 was not a hard day. Tadej Pogačar took the win in a reduced bunch sprint of 31 riders all on the same time. Roglič moved to the front briefly on the climb of Vuillens with 28km to go, faded almost immediately, and chose — visibly — to ride the closing kilometres at a markedly reduced pace rather than fight for a top-30. The decision removed him from GC contention before the queen stage.
The wider context is what has elevated the criticism from a stage-2 talking point to a full team-and-rider discussion. The same critics pointed to a broader pattern stretching back to Tour de France 2025, where Roglič had been the team's protected card and ended the race outside the top ten after spending the closing three mountain stages riding what one Red Bull staffer called, off the record, "suicide racing" — attacks from too far out, refusal to ride a defensive race in support of teammate Florian Lipowitz's podium fight, and an ending stage where Lipowitz had to chase his own teammate's break with the eventual podium spots in play.
Stage 3 in Tour de Romandie 2026, twenty-four hours after the Stage 2 sit-up, told the rest of the story. Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, with Roglič out of the GC and Lipowitz protected at +0:34 down on Pogačar, sent both Roglič and Daniel Felipe Martínez — two of the team's three best climbers — up the closing Mollendruz drag at full gas. The deployment was visibly uncomfortable for both riders: a former Vuelta winner and a former Volta a Catalunya GC contender riding luxury-domestique pulls for a 25-year-old leader they had both, a year ago, been racing against. Dorian Godon came around at the line for the win. Lipowitz finished second, Pogačar third on bonifications.
Inside Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, the conversation about Roglič's role has been running since the post-Tour de France debrief in August 2025. The team's public framing through the winter was that Roglič would lead the Giro d'Italia in May with Lipowitz given the protected slot at the Tour de France in July, and that the Romandie programme was a build-up race for both. The Stage 2 sit-up has effectively closed that framing: the May Giro line is now expected to feature Roglič in a stage-hunter rather than GC role, with the team's Italian protected card likely to fall to Jai Hindley off the Tour of the Alps build, and Lipowitz's Tour de France leadership confirmed without an asterisk.
Sport director Rolf Aldag, asked about the criticism at the Friday-evening Sion press call, did not back away from his rider but framed the conversation in broader terms than the headline. "Primož has been one of the great riders of the past ten years. He has won three Vueltas. He nearly won three Tours. He is allowed to have stages where the head and the legs do not align. We came to Romandie with two protected cards. We will leave Romandie with one. That is not the script we wrote. It is the script the race has given us. We will adapt."
For Roglič — a rider who has, across a road career that began at Slovenian junior level fewer than fifteen years ago, won four Grand Tours, two Liège-Bastogne-Lièges and an Olympic time trial — the open question is whether the Romandie sit-up is the bottom of a down-cycle or the start of a tactical pivot toward a final-act stage-hunter season. The team's working calendar through August had Roglič down for the Giro lead, the Tour de France support role behind Lipowitz, and a Vuelta a España GC tilt in late August. Whether all three slots survive next week's internal review will be the question that defines Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe's summer.
The Stage 4 queen-stage flag drop in Saint-Maurice goes at 13:15 CEST. Pogačar leads Lipowitz by 34 seconds, Hirschi by 44, Buitrago by 52. Roglič rolls into the start in 9th at +2:34, racing free for stages, no GC defence to ride. Whether the closing TT in Lausanne on Sunday becomes the rider's first stage-win attempt of the season, or another quiet day on the road, will be one of the smaller stories of the weekend — and quite possibly the more telling one.