Jai Hindley may have parked his personal ambitions at the Tour de France this season with the arrival of Primož Roglič at Bora-Hansgrohe, but team staff are confident the Australian will win one of cycling’s big three Grand Tours again.
Sports Director Enrico Gasparotto has followed Hindley’s rise at the squad, from helping to guide him to a seventh-place finish in a crash-marred Tour de France debut last season, to winning the Giro d’Italia in 2022.
“Absolutely yes,” Gasparotto says. “Second in the Giro [in 2020], he won Giro, last year could have been way better than what it was, so if he doesn’t have accidents or problems in a big tour, for sure, he can do it again. When? Hopefully soon, and hopefully with Bora!”
Hindley is out of contract at the end of this year but instead of returning to the Giro or insisting on a more protected role, he has opted to line up at the Tour with an “open mind” in support of Roglič. The Grand Tours are the epitome of racing for Hindley, but he also has an eye to the Olympic Games in Paris this year and the World Championships in Switzerland.
“I would definitely love to do the Worlds, I think that would be a really cool race, and also the Olympics,” Hindley says.
“It’s not the easiest team to make, they don’t have the most spots and we’ve also got some really good guys who will also put their hand up, but in the end it’s a pretty unique race, I would say, the Olympics.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a big bunch sprint; I don’t think it’s going to be a reduced bunch sprint. I think it will be, like, a real dog fight, and small teams and a super long day. It’s going to be epic, and after the Tour, so for sure I will put my hand up for it.
“It’s not every day you get to do the Olympics and I’ve never done it, so I would definitely love to.”
Gasparotto admits he was surprised there were not any murmurs of disquiet from Hindley or teammate Aleksandr Vlasov when Roglič’s transfer from Visma-Lease a Bike and his automatic Tour appointment was announced to the team late last year.
“I also expected some discussion or some arguments about it but there was really zero,” Gasparotto says.
If there were any gains to be made from the Tour last year, the 42-year-old believes it rests largely here, in leadership and direction. Hindley’s feedback that the squad should enter the Tour with one leader – as opposed to a GC contender and sprinter, as Bora-Hansgrohe did last season – has apparently been heeded, even if he doesn’t stand to be a direct beneficiary to it right now. The squad is all-in for Roglič.
“Jai is a super nice person,” Gasparotto says. “He’s a champion in cycling but as a person he’s a really, nice, polite person. And sometimes what I told him to do is when he has the leadership of a team, he should be a little bit more, not hard with his teammates, but he should probably say what he wants in a straight way. Sometimes Jai is too nice!
“In the crucial moments… I see the position of a leader like a person who has to take the responsibility and also address directly to everybody the things that he wants, that has to be done in a way that he wants.
“Primož is that type of rider. They are champions, they want almost everything. He’s a proper winner, he goes to the race to win the race, he doesn’t go to the race to be second or third. He doesn’t like [minor places] and that’s probably why he’s with us now, he didn’t like to be the second choice in Jumbo [Visma-Lease a Bike], for example.
“This approach to the races is something important and something Jai, Aleks [Vlasov], all the other guys, can learn from him. And they see that. The possibility.”
In the leadup to and throughout his Tour debut, Hindley never publicly put a number on what would constitute success, keeping his cards close to his chest. It was a demarcation from the Giro the year before when I asked on the second rest day if it was his aim to become the first Australian to win the Grand Tour and he famously replied: “I’m not here to put socks on centipedes.”
Talking of the Tour this year, Hindley strikes a similar tone to last season. Asked in February if Bora could be the team to beat, considering its bolstered GC stock and Red Bull’s key sponsorship investment he was measured: “I don’t think the pressure will be on us to be honest. I think it will be a really good edition.”
Gasparotto is more straightforward on the exciting team’s aspirations, if not expectations.
“The goal is to win the Tour,” he says. “But, you know, having that as a goal, which is a super big goal and difficult one as well obviously, I do hope we can achieve it, but it’s still a long way.”
The focus is more on everyone being in top shape, Hindley preparing for the Tour much the same as he did last year when he was a team leader.
On paper, it appears to be a case of so far so good.
Hindley is slated to race the Tour de Romandie next week before taking on the Dauphiné again in June. He started his season with fifth at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana and third at Tirreno-Adriatico, beaten only by Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates).
He was 12th at Itzulia Basque Country, where he raced alongside Roglič for the first time. The Slovenian was leading the race – only his second race with Bora-Hansgrohe – before he abandoned on stage four due to a mass crash.
“They should be top form, top shape at the Tour and that’s something that has to work for Primož but the same for Jai,” says Gasparotto. “And then you never know what can happen in the Tour. Maybe we have to swap roles because something goes wrong. The most important thing is that the riders are in really good shape for it.”
