Third time's the charm: ..... .After a brutal disappointment in the 2020 Tour de France, losing on the final day and retiring injured midway through the race in 2021, Primoš Roglic (Jumbo Visma) has made the event a central target for his season in 2022.

Although Roglic has had a string of bad luck in the Tour de France over the past few years, he has an ironclad reputation for recovering from sporting disappointments, and the 2021 Olympic gold medalist will be back in 2022 for the Paris-Nice, Ardennes Classics, Milan-San Remo, and Summer They will try their luck in a surprisingly wide range of races, all the way to the Vuelta a España at the end of the year.

Logrich's criterion for participating in all or any of these events seems to be the amount of pleasure he derives from them, rather than the success rate. For example, in his return to Milan-San Remo after a five-year absence, he has already decided that he will not be aiming for personal glory, but rather as a team supporting Wout Van Art. He is, however, happy to be part of the Italian monuments.

"I just want to keep having fun," Roglic told a small group of reporters at the Jumbo-Visma media day in Spain. If I get sick of racing in the Grand Tours, I won't race, I'll do a one-day race or something. But for now I'm happy with the Grand Tour and I'll try to do well in the long races"

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That includes the Tour de France, and after two years of hardship, Roglic believes that 2022 is when fortune will smile on him.

"Hopefully. That's what we're aiming for, that's what we're fighting for." [Of course, we won't know exactly if we can achieve that until afterwards. So right now it's about being as prepared as possible and going into the race.

What will be very different GC-wise at the 2022 Tour de France is that Roglic will have 2021 runner-up Jonas Vingegaard and Steven Kruijswijk; all three Jumbo-Visma racers have been on the podium, adding to the Dutch team's This adds to the depth of the Dutch team.

"We'll see what happens in the end. But we also need to work together as well as possible as a team. If we do that, it doesn't matter who wins.

In addition to his GC goals in Jumbo-Visma, Wout Van Aert has already expressed interest in going after the green jersey in this summer's Tour de France. Is having multiple goals too ambitious?

"The more strong riders you have, the more problems you can potentially have.

Roglic has several personal goals this spring, including Paris-Nice

"I've got a lot of personal goals this spring including Paris-Nice, Milan-San Remo, defending my title at the Vuelta al País Vasco, the most spectacular week-long stage race last year, and the Ardennes Classics.

"Everyone knows that the Tour and the Vuelta are the biggest goals. But Paris-Nice, if I'm in good shape and get a result, I'll never put the brakes on."

"Milan-San Remo is also an interesting race and one of the monuments. Milan - San Remo is another interesting race and one of the monuments. If I can help again in Poggio, it will be perfect."

"In Flèche Wallonne, I was passed by Julien Alaphilippe (Quick Step Alphavinil) in the last few meters of the race last April, a rare uphill loss," he said, "I did not expect that last year. So I hope no one surprises me this time."

On the other side of the Tour, of course, is the Vuelta a España. True to his usual low-key approach to historical statistics, Roglic said he didn't know that if he took the Vuelta title next September, he would join record holder Roberto Heras in terms of wins and become the first rider to win four consecutive Spanish Grand Tours. But despite the fact that his participation in the Vuelta was used as a tool for Logrich's typical humor, "We all know that I only ride the Tour so that I can be better prepared for the Vuelta," he joked on Tuesday, but he showed the same enthusiasm for the challenge.

"Hopefully, yes. It would be great to set a record and it would be crazy, so I'm looking forward to it."

"But to be honest, I haven't seen much of the route yet. I've only just started preparing and the Vuelta starts quite late. We have three days in Utrecht, Holland, and then a time trial near Alicante, and there are a lot of climbs I've never heard of." The exception, of course, is the Sierra Nevada, where Roglic regularly trains at altitude and could be a key mountain day in the entire race.

For Roglic in 2022, many of the challenges will be similar, but the competitors will be quite different. For example, Remco Evenpoel was one of them at the 2022 Vuelta a España.

Roglic sees the Quick-Step Alfa Vinyl racers as one of the youngsters who continue to inspire him. They keep us going. I think they will be strong in the Vuelta."

He also said, "I'm sure they will be strong in the Vuelta.

There are similar motivations as Roglic when it comes to two young players, his compatriot Tadei Pogachar (UAE Team Emirates) and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers). The former, of course, is the rider who ripped the Tour out of his hands in 2020, and the latter, whom Roglic beat in both the 2020 Tour and the 2021 Vuelta, will again challenge the two Slovenians in July.

"It's almost like that," said Roglic, when asked if he is less concerned about his opponents and more focused on his own race, "because you can't influence the riders there. But the more racers that race like I do, the better. There will be more excitement, more races, and the stronger ones will win."

So would it be interesting to fight Pogachar in the Tour and then again in the Vuelta? And few fans would disagree, regardless of how Roglic treats his other rivals.