Primoz Roglič’s (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) rollercoaster Vuelta a España showed no sign of letting up on Sunday as the Slovenian star failed to produce the widely expected attacks on the toughest mountain stage of the race to date.
Just 24 hours earlier Roglič had turned in a blizzard of uphill attacks on stage 8 to Cazorla to claim his second summit finish win and pull back nearly a full minute on race leader Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale).
But rather than continue where he left off, in Granada’s much more challenging terrain, Roglič not only failed to drop O’Connor but he did not respond when GC threat Enric Mas (Movistar) charged away on the crunch climb of Alto de Hazallanas.
Mas’ move was reeled in on the long, fast descent back into Granada and the finish, but the Slovenian explained later that his lingering back injury from his Tour de France crash had given him problems, and that above all “I didn’t have the legs".
When it was put to the triple Vuelta a España winner that his unexpected passive role on Hazallanas had been a surefire sign he was suffering, staying near the back of the half-dozen chasing group behind lone breakaway Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), Roglič was quick to agree.
“Definitely. I’d really had a hard time,” he said. “I’m just happy that it’s finished and that it’s a rest day tomorrow.”
The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe leader was non-committal about the risks of letting Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), a GC threat, regain so much time.
“I don’t know all the results, so it’s hard to comment everything, who is where, what is where," he said. “I also have no idea where I finished. I just want to cool down and take some drinks.”
Roglič’s uncertainty about the GC situation will likely be resolved when he sees on the results sheet that he remained in second overall, 3:53 down on O’Connor, who pulled back four seconds by sprinting for third in Granada. Roglič even wore the mountains classification jersey on stage 9, but lost it to Adam Yates in the end.
But the bigger question marks about his underlying condition, just when they were on the point of evaporating after his blisteringly strong performance in Cazorla, have once again expanded to unexpected levels. Rather than regain time on O’Connor, the gaps remained stable in the Sierra Nevada stage. If Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) lost yet more ground and João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) abandoned altogether, other GC challengers like Yates and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) moved back in the opposite direction, and fast.
There are still two weeks of the Vuelta left to go, but Roglič was unable to do what had been widely expected and put the race out of reach in Sierra Nevada. What happens from hereon, then, is anyone’s guess, and what Roglic can finally achieve remains equally uncertain.
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