“The car was going right; they (the driver) didn’t see me, and they hit me,” Primož Roglič says. “I wasn’t going fast, but… boom.” He makes a thudding sound. “I hit the ground straight, no sliding, nothing like that, just straight to the ground, (landing) on my (upper right leg) muscles.”

Roglič is telling The Athletic the story of how, four weeks out from the ongoing Vuelta a España, the Grand Tour he’s won a record-equalling four times, a car slammed into him while training at altitude in Livigno, Italy. It left him with a severely bruised leg and threw his Vuelta participation — the only real point to his whole season, in which he has been demoted to the third-favourite in a now-stacked Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team — in severe doubt.

“I actually thought it wasn’t a big deal, because at the time I didn’t have any big pain,” he says. “But then it started in the evening, more and more. Then I was three weeks in and I hadn’t moved one millimetre from where I’d been. In the end, with all the pain and everything, I was wondering if it would ever be OK again.”

With his future in cycling uncertain, it would have been a cruel and deeply unfitting way for a legend to bow out.

But then, on the eve of the Spanish race getting underway on August 22, Roglič’s recovery rapidly sped up and he was able to mount his bike again. “I did some rides, but that was all I had,” he says. It was enough. “I came to Monaco (where the race started), happy to be there, and enjoyed it.”

Nine days of racing later, Roglič sits second overall in the fight for the red jersey he has worn for 38 stages since 2019.

This article was published in The Athletic/New York Times during the 2026 Vuelta a España. You can read the full article here.