Primoz Roglic wins his fourth Vuelta in the Iberian specialty – Libération

2024-09-08 17:39:29

The Slovenian escaped his recurring bad luck and won his favorite event, the Tour of Spain, again this Sunday 8 September. A feat that paradoxically reveals the limits of a rider who no longer seems capable of winning the Tour de France.

And in the end it was Primoz Roglic who won in Spain. At the end of a final time trial on the streets of Madrid, the Slovenian Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider won the Vuelta this Sunday, September 8, for the fourth time in his career. He had already worn the red jersey in 2019 and 2020 in the Spanish capital and in 2021 during a transfer arrival in Santiago de Compostela. The 34-year-old climber also becomes co-record for number of victories in the Tour of Spain with Roberto Heras. The Spaniard had lost the benefit of his last title after a positive test the day before arrival, in 2005, but found it again seven years later in court, because that’s how cycling sometimes goes.

Primoz Roglic did not build on this latest success like the previous times. Less dominant, the Slovenian even left control of the race to Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Difesa) for a long time, happy to have regained control thanks to a breakaway on the river during the 6th stage. Was it really serious to leave almost five minutes ahead of the Australian, who already finished 4th in the Tour de France (in 2021) and 4th in the Giro this year? However, this allowed Roglic’s team not to take charge for much of the race, the Slovenian only recovered his possession on Friday, among the pine trees of Alto de Moncalvillo, the day before the arrival. And Ben O’Connor finished in 2nd place. The Spanish Enric Mas (Movistar) completes the podium. The first Frenchman, David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), scores a 6th place in resurgent form, after a very disappointing year.

Performance maousse

Salvador Dali in shorts, Primoz Roglic has once again managed to melt the clocks. And to counter, once is not customary, his legendary scumoune. Here there is no stage like the one that made him abandon the Tour de France prematurely again this year and which brought him to Spain surrounded by an aura of uncertainty. No illness either, almost a miracle because Covid once again put a damper on the race, eliminating João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates), one of the favourites, at the start of the second week. Until the day before his arrival, Primoz Roglic seemed on the verge of being overcome by the evil eye. On Saturday we saw half of his team disappear (three dropouts) due to food poisoning, and Spanish public television even announced that a member of staff had to be urgently hospitalized with salmonellosis. But Primoz The bad luck was still there.

Make no mistake: winning the Vuelta four times is a huge achievement. But paradoxically it also tells, implicitly, the limits of Slovenian. Roglic has won almost all the weekly races that count (Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Dauphiné, Tour du Pays Basque, Romandie…) and raised his arms at last year’s Giro – despite an unlikely chain drop in the last timer edition. But he never managed to win the Tour de France. The closest he came, in 2020, was when he was taken down on the penultimate day by a young compatriot called Tadej Pogacar. A few weeks later, Roglic won his second Vuelta. His victories at the Tour of Spain tell a bit about this: a sort of eternal consolation prize, when the others are not there (last year Vingegaard showed up, Roglic came third behind the Dane and teammate Kuss). Almost 35 years old and given the adversities of the Grande Boucle, the yellow jersey risks remaining the former ski jumper’s biggest regret. Fortunately, he is still in the hunt for an unprecedented quintuple in the Vuelta.