His former employers said that ‘The King’ was departing when he changed teams last season, but even without his ex-Jumbo-Visma aides, the monarch still reigns in his adopted territory. Six Vuelta a España participations for Primož Roglič, four victories. And had a last week crash and team politics not got in the way in the other two, it probably would have been six in six. The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rey is a modern day foreign ruler of Spain. The Vuelta is undeniably his.
Win number four moves him alongside Roberto Heras on the joint most wins, the Spaniard calling it an “honour” to share the title with the Slovenian. Give it another year or two and the likelihood is Roglič will be out in front on his own. He comes to Spain every late summer, usually trying to make up for Tour de France disappointment (agonising defeat or crashes, depends on the year), and he returns home almost without fail with an additional red jersey. He crushes his GC opposition in the time trials; he outsprints them in reduced sprints; he beats them on steep uphill finishes; and this year, out of necessity for a week one tactical error that took a long time to atone, he’s gone long, he’s been brave and he’s ridden more aggressively and assertively than ever before. His final advantage to Ben O’Connor in second is 2:36 – decisive, conclusive, irrefutably the deserved winner.
O’Connor, too, irrefutably deserves his spot on the podium. He’s not been among the top-three climbers, the race has shown that consistently ever since he spectacularly gained red with a magnificent and massive win on stage six, but riding for general classification isn’t only about being the best going up mountains. It’s about being courageous, daring, and ballsy. It’s about playing your cards and being a bike racer. Stage six was peak bike racer races to win race. Oh, and being a GC contender is also about time trialling, and O’Connor put almost 30 seconds into Enric Mas and Richard Carapaz in Madrid. He’s on the podium by 86 seconds – clear daylight; he could have got off his bike as he rode up Madrid’s Gran Vía, ordered and downed the first of many celebratory cañas, and still finished second. The Australian, in red for 13 stages, has his Grand Tour podium that he’s been dreaming of all career.
In taking the Enric Mas trademarked position of second, O’Connor has relegated the Mallorcan to third. He said after stage 20 that he wasn’t pleased because he wanted to win, but at three minutes adrift of Roglič, his rival's shadow stubbornly remains so close yet so far away. He continues as Spain’s nearly man, this registering as his fourth Vuelta podium. At least he’s been more attacking this time around.
In many ways, it’s been a Vuelta of expectations: Roglič won, and Mas finished just behind him; the sun burned hot, really hot, maybe dangerously hot in the south, and the rain fell in the foggy but beautiful north; the climbs were steep, unfathomably steep, inhumanely steep, but made for captivating, enthralling, edge-of-your-seat entertainment; few sprinters turned up (they never do), but of those that did, the best one won the most – points jersey winner Kaden Groves with three victories; and a Tadej Pogačar-less UAE Team Emirates might not have contested red, but do walk away as the official best team, three stage wins from three different riders. They’re the team of galácticos.
Never a race to be conventional, the Vuelta maintained its eccentricities: a dinosaur followed his eponymous T-Rex Quick-Step team everywhere, a stage started next to the dairy aisle in a closed Carrefour supermarket, and for a good while the best sprinter was the best climber. But it never remained that way, Wout van Aert heartbreakingly abandoning on stage 16, his season over. There were other disappointments, too: Ineos Grenadiers’ wretched season continues, while Sepp Kuss’s defence of his title is best forgotten about.
Above all, though, this Vuelta will be remembered for the feel good stories: Eddie Dunbar’s two stage wins after years of setbacks and rejections; Kern Pharma’s unfancied, glorious hat-trick of success; Pablo Castrillo’s unforeseen emergence as a genuine superstar, likewise Florian Lipowitz; Jay Vine’s five month turnaround from intensive care and spinal injury to winner of the mountains classification; Stefan Küng’s time trial win in Madrid, finally at long last his maiden Grand Tour stage; and, yes, after his latest Tour trauma, Primož Roglič at 34 proving that he most definitely has still got it. O’Connor and Mas thought they could prevent him, but they, like so many before them, were Roglified.
