“It’s not over yet” was how Primoz Roglič said he now views the battle for overall victory in the Vuelta a España, but after a straightforward ride through the toughest and last mountain stage and with the red jersey still on his shoulders by a comfortable margin, it’s surely downhill all the way to Madrid now.
Barring last-minute disaster in the final 24.6-kilometre individual time trial in Madrid, the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe leader is all but set to claim a record-equalling fourth overall victory on Sunday evening and a fifth Grand Tour title in six years.
Rather than put his rivals to the test one last time on the painfully steep slopes of the Picón Blanco summit finish, Roglič opted to keep the main contenders under control and bar losing a handful of seconds to Enric Mas (Movistar), his overall advantage on second-placed Ben O’Connor (AG2R La Mondiale) stands at a comfortable 2:02.
On a day when Roglič proved that after a Vuelta with some wobbles on the climbing stages and a drawn-out battle to regain the red jersey from O’Connor, he’s finishing on the highest note possible, Red Bull’s biggest setback was the loss of no less than three of the Slovenian teammates to illness. However, Roglič said he was not affected, and as he put it, “now I just have to finish it [the Vuelta] off.”
Asked whether he felt the Vuelta was now virtually won, Roglič provided a guarded but upbeat answer. “Definitely it is better to be two minutes ahead than five minutes behind and it’s one day less. There’s a big day to come tomorrow, so we will see after the race if it is enough or not. My thing is to give it everything tomorrow.”
Roglič’s caution was perhaps understandable given how Red Bull all but lost control of the Vuelta when O’Connor moved ahead by - coincidence or not - five minutes after his devastating solo breakaway on stage 6. But by the summit of Moncalvillo on stage 19 and courtesy of a third stage win, Roglič had finally ousted O’Connor after his 13-day spell in red. Then on Picón Blanco, as his rivals effectively all but conceded him the overall victory and opted to fight each other for the stage win instead, the Slovenian opted for a more conservative stance and simply shadowed the other contenders to the summit.
“The last climb was hard, but really today all the climbs were hard,” Roglič said afterwards, “but I won the fight so I’m definitely happy with the result.”
Bora’s troubles had far more to do with their team than their leader on stage 20 and became clear early on in the ultra-mountainous stage when Nico Denz and Patrick Gamper both were dropped early on and later on Gamper abandoned because of sickness while Denz ultimately crossed the finish line outside the time limit. Daní Martinez, one of the key riders to tee up Roglič’s attack on Moncalvillo later followed suit, while fellow climber Aleksandr Vlasov started suffering mid-stage and finally finished more than half an hour down.
Fortunately for Roglič, not only was he unaffected in person, but both Ineos Grenadiers and Soudal-QuickStep were keen to control what could have been a much more testing mountain trek with nearly 5,000 metres of vertical climbing and the Red Bull team only came to the fore of the leading GC group in the closing kilometres.
When they did so, his teammates Roger Adria, Giovanni Aleotti and Florian Lipowitz proved unaffected by the illness, and more than up to the task of laying down a solid pace on the approach roads to Picón Blanco and its viciously steep lower slopes. Then after that, it was up to Roglič himself to handle any challenges - something he did with a seemingly minimal effort.
The guys were not feeling their best from the morning on, there’s something going around,” Roglič confirmed. “Luckily for me I’m still feeling fine and now I just have to finish it off.”
“It’s not over yet, but definitely one big one less, one day closer than yesterday, so it’s the right direction. But tomorrow is a GC day so we have to finish it off."
Sunday is indeed anything but the straightforward criterium-style stage that so often closes down the Grand Tours, with the Vuelta taking a leaf out of the 2024 Tour de France’s book and returning to a final time trial stage through the streets of Madrid.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Roglič said. “I mean, I just saw it on the paper or in the big book, so it’s a challenge now. I’m going to Madrid to try to do the recon and do a good time trial.”
However, despite the now distant memories of a Grand Toru last time trial wrecking Roglič’s grip on GC as in the Tour de France, his more recent experiences of such last-day individual races against the clock are far more positive.
In 2021 in the Vuelta a España at Santiago de Compostela, Roglič soared through the last time trial to claim a final stage victory as well as the overall win, while in 2023 in the Giro’s final TT on the second last day, he ousted Geraint Thomas from the pink jersey to clinch outright triumph as well. Barring the biggest of surprises, for Roglič, Sunday’s last stage of the 2024 Vuelta a España should produce an identical result overall.
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