Friday afternoon, 5pm. As most of Europe switched off their computers and their week’s work done, Primož Roglič was just getting started on his big task. It’d been in his intray for a fortnight, a daunting but still manageable effort entirely of his own doing required before he could sign off. He almost swotted up by completing the assignment at the start of the week, but the road and his act of foul play (illegally drafting behind cars will get punished, a memo from the UCI read) meant that the end of the week – stage 19 of the Vuelta a España – would be work time. He had a job to do, and he would do it well.
As a small lead group reached the bottom of Alto de Moncalvillo, yet another steep finishing climb – road builders in Spain really were barbaric, weren’t they? – Roglič’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe colleagues went to the front en-masse, four of them in support of the Slovenian who had a five second deficit to overturn race leader Ben O’Connor. Everyone expected him to do it, but few would have foreseen how cold, calculated, controlled and methodical it would be. Heck, it was even emotionless: nonchalantly swapping the pages on his head unit, no violent acceleration, and just one steady, constant pace. It was Team Sky-esque, one by one a teammate dropping off: first Florian Lipowitz, riding his own race in the battle to be the best young rider; then Dani Martínez, a huge pull for a kilometre that distanced the rest of the GC field; and finally Aleksandr Vlasov, a grimacing 600-metre turn before Roglič took over. That was at 4.9km to go, and already he had 34 seconds on O’Connor.
At the top, his advantage to the fallen leader was enormous: one minute and 49 seconds. Add in the 10 bonus seconds for winning the stage, his third of the race and 15th of his career, and he took just a second shy of two minutes out of the toppled Australian. For the first time since stage five, Roglič is back in red, and his lead is comfortable, convincing, and probably unassailable: 1:54. And it’ll no doubt increase, if not on Saturday, then definitely on Sunday’s time trial. This wasn’t Vintage Roglič as Vintage Roglič waits for the final 500 metres to attack; this was focused, efficient, prolific, dominating Roglič. It was masterful. He promised he’d deliver, and deliver he did.
After all the weirdness, perplexity and strangeness of this Vuelta – remember, the stage where O’Connor seized the lead started inside a supermarket – there’s a semblance of normality to the race now: Roglič is back at the top of the standings, closing in on his fourth maillot rojo, and Enric Mas occupies one of the podium’s other spots. At present, the Movistar man is third, but he’s only 26 seconds adrift of O’Connor in second place, his second place. He’s been much more más than menos this Vuelta, even if he was unable to sustain his attack on Friday and eventually crawled across the line, but the Mallorcan is looking good for a fourth runner-up prize at his home Grand Tour.
The chasing of O’Connor, meanwhile, doesn’t stop just because his run as leader has come to an end after 13 stages. He currently has a cushion of a minute to Richard Carapaz in the fight to retain a podium spot. But stage 20 is a fierce, savage, shark-teeth kind of day – just the sort of parcours primed for a long-range Carapaz escapade, and O’Connor has a penchant for losing *checks notes* around a minute or more in every mountain stage. Is he going to complete the unwanted set: fourth at the Giro, Tour and Vuelta?
