Primoz Roglic did not lose his Vuelta build-up on a mountain, in a bunch sprint, or on a wet descent with the race on the line. He lost it on a training ride, when a car driver hit him. The four-time Vuelta winner came away with severe bruising to the backs of his thighs and, according to reporting from Cyclingnews and others, has been forced out of the Clasica San Sebastian and the Vuelta a Burgos — two of the last hard hit-outs before the Vuelta a España starts in Monaco on 22 August. He kept the big goal, a record fifth red jersey. He lost the sharpening. And it happened the way it almost always happens: not in the arena, but on a public road any of us could be riding tomorrow. So here is the uncomfortable question the sport, pro cycling rarely puts on a poster. What is the most dangerous part of a professional cyclist’s job — the racing, or the training?
What happened to Roglic
The facts are thin because the outcome, this time, was merciful. Roglic was training on open roads, completing his final block before the Vuelta, when he was struck by a car driver. His Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe camp described heavy bruising on the back of the thighs rather than fractures, and the rider himself struck a philosophical note reported across the cycling press: “Not the best scenario, but it’s life.” The immediate cost is two race days — San Sebastian and Burgos — scrubbed from a calendar that was built around them. For a 36-year-old chasing history against younger legs, form is not a switch you flick in the last fortnight. Miss the tune-ups and you gamble that race rhythm arrives on its own, at altitude, under pressure. Roglic was lucky. The point of this piece is how thin that luck runs.
A roll call nobody wants to be on
Line up the recent cases and a pattern hardens into something closer to an occupational hazard.
Michele Scarponi, killed. On 22 April 2017, the day after finishing fourth at the Tour of the Alps, the former Giro d’Italia winner was struck by a van at a crossroads near his home in Filottrano, Italy. He was 37. A driver, a junction, a rider who never came home. Astana called it a tragedy too big to write. It remains the starkest reminder the pro cycling sport has: the road does not care what you have won.
Egan Bernal, nearly killed. In January 2022 the 2019 Tour de France champion rode into the back of a stopped bus while training in Colombia. He later put the impact speed at roughly 60 km/h. The toll was catalogued in a medical case study: around twenty fractures, including vertebrae and a femur, chest trauma and a punctured lung. Doctors reportedly gave him a 95 percent chance of ending up paralysed. He walked out of hospital in weeks and raced again inside the year — a recovery so improbable it became academic literature. It should never have needed to be.
Remco Evenepoel, broken. On 3 December 2024 the double Olympic pro cycling champion collided with the opening door of a Belgian postal van near Brussels. The bill: a fractured rib, right shoulder blade and right hand, lung contusions and a dislocated collarbone. His bike was snapped clean in two by the impact. He was conscious throughout, which is its own kind of horror. Months of a title-holder’s season vanished because a door opened.
Chris Froome, spared. The four-time Tour winner has spoken of being deliberately rammed by an impatient hit-and-run driver while training in southern France — a reminder that not all the danger is careless; some of it is contempt. Froome walked away. Others in the same situation have not.
Different countries, different vehicles, different years. The common denominator is a professional athlete on an ordinary road, sharing tarmac with a tonne of metal driven by someone whose day did not depend on seeing them.
Why the open road is the real exposure
Pro cycling looks like the dangerous part, and sometimes it is. But racing is the minority of a professional’s saddle time. A World Tour rider trains 25,000 to 35,000 kilometres a year; only a fraction of that is behind barriers, on closed roads, with commissaires and neutral-service cars managing the space. The rest — the base miles, the motor-pacing, the recovery spins — happens exactly where you and I ride: junctions, roundabouts, parked cars, phones, blind bends, drivers in a hurry. No road furniture is cleared for them. No marshal waves the traffic down. The very thing that makes a champion — volume, hours, consistency — is also what maximises their exposure to the one variable no training plan can control: another human being at a wheel. You cannot periodise your way out of a driver who did not look.
What a driver’s mistake actually costs
Be blunt about the stakes, because the sport’s own language often is not. A crash on a training ride is not an “incident.” It is a winter of work billed to someone else’s carelessness. Roglic’s bruises cost him two races and a chunk of certainty in a season he has structured around one August morning. Bernal’s bus cost him the best months of his prime and, very nearly, the use of his legs. Evenepoel’s van door cost a title-holder half a campaign and a bike sponsor a frame in two pieces. Scarponi’s crossroads cost him everything, and cost a wife two children’s father. Behind each headline sits a wage bill, a team’s sponsor promises, a contract window narrowing, and a body that has to get up the next morning and pedal anyway — if it still can. This is people gambling their bodies for a living, and then discovering the biggest bet was the drive to the start of the ride. When the danger is that ordinary, whose job is it to make the road safe for pro cycling?
Can any of this be fixed?
Not cleanly, and not by cyclists alone — which is the frustrating part. Teams have leaned on what they can control: rear-facing radar units that warn of approaching cars, brighter kit, daytime running lights, and steering star riders toward quieter roads and indoor trainers for the sessions that do not need the open air. Some national federations and advocacy groups push for enforced minimum passing distances — the “close-pass” laws — and stiffer penalties when a driver kills or maims a rider. All of it helps at the margins. None of it changes the core exposure, because the core exposure is a public road that belongs to everyone and is policed for no one in particular. A radar beeps; it does not steer the van. A high-viz jersey is only useful to a driver who is looking. The honest position is that pro cycling has largely accepted a level of open-road risk that any workplace safety regime would refuse to sign off on — and calls it Tuesday.
Why it matters
Roglic’s bruises will fade and, in all likelihood, he will line up in Monaco on 22 August with the fifth Vuelta still in reach. That is the version with a happy ending, and it is worth remembering that most of these stories do end that way. But the near-misses and the not-misses are drawn from the same well, and the sport keeps returning to it because it has no choice: the road is the office, and the office is open to traffic. Every fan who has ever ridden to work knows the feeling of a car passing too close — the professionals just do it for eight hours a day, in every weather, for a living. So when the next rider is hit on a training ride, resist the word “freak.” It is not freakish. It is the most predictable danger in the sport, hiding in plain sight on a road near you. The only real question is how many more names the roll call needs before the road itself is treated as part of the race.
Sources
- Cyclingnews — Roglic hit by car driver in training, forced to miss Vuelta build-up races
- Velo (Outside) — Roglic hit by car, Vuelta preparations thrown into chaos
- Cyclingnews — Michele Scarponi killed in training
- Escape Collective — Egan Bernal’s near-death crash as a medical case study
- Cycling Weekly — Bernal on the crash: ‘I hit the bus at speed’
- Cyclingnews — Evenepoel taken to hospital after collision with postal van
- Cycling Weekly — Evenepoel’s fractures from the training-ride collision
- Gulf News — Froome unscathed in ‘hit and run’ incident
Related reading
CyclingFreePress is a cycling news digest. This article summarises reporting from independent cycling outlets; injuries, dates and circumstances are as reported at the time of writing (31 July 2026) and may be updated as more detail emerges. Roglic’s Vuelta build-up is a developing situation and his start remains subject to fitness. This piece discusses serious road-traffic injuries and one fatality; it is written to weigh the risk professional riders carry, not to sensationalise it.