Primož Roglič did what he had to do on Sunday, taking second place to Stefan Küng in the concluding 24.6-km time trial in Madrid, while retaining his red jersey as the Vuelta winner. However, it wasn’t ideal. He told reporters after the race, “I mean, I also went to the toilet 20 times already today.”
His Red Bull–BORA–Hansgrohe team was plagued by illness in the final days of the Vuelta a España. During Stage 20, Daniel Martínez and Patrick Gamper were forced to abandon, and Nico Denz finished over the time limit. Although Aleksandr Vlasov finished within the time limit, he was not as strong as usual.
A challenging finale
Roglič was affected by the illness but not as severely as his teammates. “In the end, I was way too far, I had to finish it off. Yeah, it is how it is. There were definitely some challenges for all of us to try to prevent these things happening, but yeah, these things are for later,” he said. “Now is time to enjoy a bit of the victory.”
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Roglič’s teammate Florian Lipowitz was also affected by the sickness, though not as badly. “I had stomach problems last night and I couldn’t really sleep, so I was tired today. I had the same thing as my teammates, but I was super tired this morning,” the German said.
It took two weeks for Roglič to catch Ben O’Connor, the Australian who gained a 4:51 lead with his Stage 6 win before being overtaken on Stage 19. Until the final stages, the young rider classification was tightly contested among Florian Lipowitz, Carlos Rodríguez, and Matthias Skjelmose.
Skjelmose surged ahead in the last week and surpassed David Gaudu in the GC after Sunday’s time trial.
The win for the Slovenian comes after a roller coaster of a season. Roglič was involved in a crash earlier this season at the Basque Country, which derailed Jonas Vingegaard’s season. He also later abandoned the Tour de France after a bad crash on Stage 12.
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