Primož Roglič was already wrapped up for the descent to his Jumbo-Visma team bus when he rolled by the mixed zone atop Sierra Nevada after stage 15 of the Vuelta a España. “It was hard, eh. It’s a big climb,” he said. The vista behind him, with Granada shimmering in the distance almost 2,000 metres below, confirmed as much.
The task facing him at this race, meanwhile, continues to be trimmed to more manageable dimensions, even if the scales haven’t been tipped in his favour just yet. The fifteen seconds he clawed back on Remco Evenepoel here ensured that his challenge maintains its momentum as the Vuelta breaks for its final rest day. Six stages from Madrid, he trails Evenepoel by 1:34.
As at La Pandera the previous afternoon, Roglič had set his Jumbo-Visma squad to work in the finale of stage 15, with Chris Harper helping to whittle the red jersey group down to the quick by the time the race hit the steep Hazallanas section at the base of the final climb.
Ten miles or so of high road remained. Evenepoel, in red, felt compelled to control the race from the front, while Roglič opted to sit at the back of the five-man group, seemingly eyeing an opportunity to strike.
The inevitable acceleration came far later than anticipated, however, with little more than a kilometre remaining. By then, Enric Mas (Movistar) had already stolen away in the company of Miguel Ángel López (Astana Premier Tech), but Roglič elected not to join in that offensive. He admitted afterwards that he had been struggling on the steep lower portion of the climb.
“Actually, I didn’t really feel good,” Roglič admitted afterwards. “But at the end, I still managed to come through and I’m happy with that.”
There are many ways up the mountainside, and Roglič, a regular habitué of the nearby High Performance Centre, was familiar with most of them. He understood that if he managed to hang tough until the road climbed above 2,000 metres, he might be able to eek out an opportunity closer to the finish, and so it proved.
At several times in the final 5km, Roglič climbed menacingly from the saddle, as if flapping his wings to prepare for flight, but he didn’t get off the ground until the final ramps of the climb, when he accelerated clear of Evenepoel, bringing Ben O’Connor (AG2R Citroën) with him.
“I guess here at the top I was feeling actually better a bit than at the bottom,” said Roglič, who laughed when asked what his plan had been at the beginning of the…
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