Primož Roglič heads into the Tour de France stage 5 time trial already down on time and chasing his GC rivals with a 1:27 deficit to second-placed man Tadej Pogačar, with the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe leader saying he's been "suffering" during the early stages of the race.
So far, the Slovenian has avoided the crashes and bad luck which have plagued him in recent editions of the Tour, though he said it has been a "tough start" this July.
"Like I said, for me it was quite tough, if I'm honest, to come here," Roglič told ITV after stage 4, which saw him finish 32 seconds off stage winner Pogačar. "But still, it's a tough start, eh? If I would be flying, I would be [up there] with one leg.
"But yes, I'm suffering a lot to go through these days. In the end, I always want to win, but in this case, I don't care about the time gaps. I put everything on the road day after day, and we see what that means at the end."
Roglič may have avoided hitting the deck through four days of racing, but his teammates have been caught up in several scrapes, with sprinter Jordi Meeus caught up in the crashes on stage 3 and lead-out man Danny van Poppel shown a yellow card for his role in a crash at the finish of the same stage.
Mick van Dijke crashed on the nervous run through the late hills on stage 4, while the team's backup GC hopeful, Florian Lipowitz, is 22 seconds further adrift than Roglič after dropping before the final climb on Tuesday.
Roglič said that making it to Paris would represent a personal triumph, having DNFed at his past three Tour starts. And, while team directeur sportif Patxi Vila told El Tiempo that "his numbers don't indicate a decline", Roglič said he doesn't expect to be competing with Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Remco Evenepoel during stage 5's time trial in Caen.
"Don't say it too fast or too loud. But like I said, it would be for sure nice to get to Paris, no? Long time, no see, eh?" Roglič said.
"Looking at how the guys are going, I don't really think so," he said of his chances on stage 5. "They are super, super fast and strong. But tomorrow is a new day. You never know how it will definitely be. The point is that I will give everything, and we'll see, eh?"
All in all, Roglič provided a realistic, if not the most upbeat, assessment of his chances this July. Earlier this week, he told El Tiempo that he had a difficult run-in to the race following his Giro d'Italia crash and abandon, but said, "You can’t savour the sweet things without knowing the difficulties.
"After the Giro, I was on antibiotics, I worked hard to bounce back, and here I am," he added. "I have to race my race, focus on myself, and give my best. Maybe I can still do something big; in any case, it’s a privilege to race alongside them, to be in the mix with such strong young riders."
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