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Primož Roglič’s Jumbo-Visma teammates sat together atop Monte Lussari on Saturday afternoon, locked somewhere between fear and hope as they watched events unfold on the big screen past the finish line. It was hard not to think of La Planche des Belles Filles and all that.
The 2023 Giro d’Italia, just like the 2020 Tour de France, would be decided by a hybrid mountain time trial on the penultimate day. On that occasion, Roglič was trying to defend the yellow jersey against a fellow Slovenian. Here, he was vying to snatch the maglia rosa at the last, cheered on by the thousands of compatriots who had made the short trip across the border.
The circumstances were different, but the energy was the same. Tom Dumoulin and Wout van Aert’s anxious expressions of three years ago were mirrored by those of Sepp Kuss and Sam Oomen here. The patchy information on the time gaps between Roglič and Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) only added to the general sense of jitteriness.
When the speaker at the finish announced, in Italian, that Roglič had already pulled back 16 seconds on Thomas at the second intermediate check, Oomen threw his hands up in annoyance: “Say it in English too!” Confirmation from the on-screen graphic did little to defuse the prevailing tension.
Moments later, a guttural cry emerged from Jumbo-Visma huddle. Oomen stood up and walked in a circle before sitting down again. The television pictures now showed Roglič standing in the road, trying to re-ship a slipped chain. A litany of misfortunes has been visited upon Roglič over the years in Grand Tours, but losing the Giro because of an episode like this would have added a whole new wing to that particular house of pain.
From the pillion of the following motorbike, Roglič’s directeur sportif Marc Reef watched the moment unfold almost in slow motion. The Jumbo-Visma mechanic, travelling on a second motorbike, fumbled to get Roglič’s replacement machine, and he then risked stumbling into the rider as he scrambled against the gradient.
In those twenty seconds of panic, however, Roglič appeared the calmest man on Monte Lussari. He managed to re-ship the chain by himself, and he was pushed on his way again by a spectator, later revealed to be a former ski jumping teammate. As a teenager, Mitja Meznar had won a junior world title with Roglič just over the border in nearby Planica. Now he was nudging him towards the Giro.
“The first thing I did was I yelled, ‘We need the…
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