Even if you watched the past four stages carefully, you may have not spotted Primoz Roglic in the Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe special Tour jersey. The Slovenian has been simply anonymous so far and in the first stage where GC favourites showed some cracks, Roglic was among those who lost time.”He had a mechanical issue after that Mick van Dijke crash, so that was with 20km or so to go,” his sports director Rolf Aldag explained to Daniel Benson. “After that, his front derailleur wouldn’t work properly anymore, so he did some torque efforts because he stayed on the big ring all the way to the finish.”
It was particular peculiar situation for Roglic who prefers to ride in a smaller gear. “Riding on that 17% climb and all the way to the finish on the big ring, that is not actually his speciality, as we all know. He likes quite a high cadence, so that was pretty difficult for him.”
“Today it would have been nice to be in that group of favourites, but there is an explanation for it: staying on the big gear on that steep climb was not perfect,” Aldag said. “Roglic was pretty relaxed about it when he cooled down. It is what it is. Luckily, nothing really bad happened. He was pretty relaxed about it.”
Aldag dismissed the idea that Roglic’s pre-race ambition of a podium place was already being revised downwards. “No, we only reassess after stage 9, then we will see,” said Aldag. The director actually believes in one of Roglic’s many weapons – time trial – to do wonders on Wednesday.
Although his words are slightly more modest. “Hopefully he can do a good one,” Aldag said. “If Remco pulls out what he pulled out in the Dauphiné, then he seems to be unbeatable, but the other two are also super strong. I think being in that range and not losing dramatic time [is the target].”