Roglic beats Colbrelli and Pogacar to BeKing Monaco criterium win
Jumbo-Visma rider victorious in off-season criterium featuring Froome, Trentin and Thomas
Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) came out on top in Sunday's inaugural BeKing Monaco criterium, beating Paris-Roubaix winner Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Victorious) and Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) to the line in the charity event.
The trio came to the finish together, with Roglič finishing well clear on the line. Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) led home the rest of the field some 17 seconds later.
The charity event, organised by Matteo Trentin and his wife Claudia Morandini, along with AWE International Group and Live Your Passion, raised money for the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation and the Michele Scarponi Foundation, and saw a number of high-profile riders from Monaco and the surrounding area take part.
Former Tour de France winners Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas also took part in the team-based event that included 40 pro riders in total. The criterium saw the riders complete 40 laps of a 1.3km circuit in the centre of Monaco.
"It was a fast and difficult race from the beginning and in the last laps the best riders stayed in the lead," said Roglič.
"At the end of the race - it is always nice to win and I think it was a great event, it was important to participate and to be involved in this cause. This was the last race of a season that has had its ups and downs for me, now I am slowly starting to prepare for the next one."
Roglič is expected to sit down in the coming weeks and decide on how he and his Jumbo-Visma team will plot their path to the Tour de France, with the Dutch team hoping to end Pogačar's two-year reign.
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Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.