Primož Roglič was already wrapped up for the descent to his Jumbo-Visma team bus when he rolled by the mixed zone atop Sierra Nevada after stage 15 of the Vuelta a España. “It was hard, eh. It’s a big climb,” he said. The vista behind him, with Granada shimmering in the distance almost 2,000 metres below, confirmed as much.
The task facing him at this race, meanwhile, continues to be trimmed to more manageable dimensions, even if the scales haven’t been tipped in his favour just yet. The fifteen seconds he clawed back on Remco Evenepoel here ensured that his challenge maintains its momentum as the Vuelta breaks for its final rest day. Six stages from Madrid, he trails Evenepoel by 1:34.
As at La Pandera the previous afternoon, Roglič had set his Jumbo-Visma squad to work in the finale of stage 15, with Chris Harper helping to whittle the red jersey group down to the quick by the time the race hit the steep Hazallanas section at the base of the final climb.
Ten miles or so of high road remained. Evenepoel, in red, felt compelled to control the race from the front, while Roglič opted to sit at the back of the five-man group, seemingly eyeing an opportunity to strike.
The inevitable acceleration came far later than anticipated, however, with little more than a kilometre remaining. By then, Enric Mas (Movistar) had already stolen away in the company of Miguel Ángel López (Astana Premier Tech), but Roglič elected not to join in that offensive. He admitted afterwards that he had been struggling on the steep lower portion of the climb.
“Actually, I didn’t really feel good,” Roglič admitted afterwards. “But at the end, I still managed to come through and I’m happy with that.”
There are many ways up the mountainside, and Roglič, a regular habitué of the nearby High Performance Centre, was familiar with most of them. He understood that if he managed to hang tough until the road climbed above 2,000 metres, he might be able to eek out an opportunity closer to the finish, and so it proved.
At several times in the final 5km, Roglič climbed menacingly from the saddle, as if flapping his wings to prepare for flight, but he didn’t get off the ground until the final ramps of the climb, when he accelerated clear of Evenepoel, bringing Ben O’Connor (AG2R Citroën) with him.
“I guess here at the top I was feeling actually better a bit than at the bottom,” said Roglič, who laughed when asked what his plan had been at the beginning of the stage. “To win the race, eh. Like I said, I really didn’t have the legs to do that, but I still came close. It’s better to gain fifteen than lose fifteen. So we go with that to the next week.”
Harper
Roglič elected to deploy some of his lieutenants in the day’s early break, with Rohan Dennis and Sam Oomen escaping in that sizeable move, before he set his teammates Robert Gesink and Harper to work on the stiff penultimate climb of Alto del Purche. The aim, to isolate Evenepoel, was clear, and their efforts helped to rid the maillot rojo of his key domestique Ilan Van Wilder, though the Belgian briefly fought back over the other side.
“Our plan was to blow the race up on the steep climb and we did that,” said Harper, who continued in the same vein on the base of the 20km ascent to Sierra Nevada, which brought the Vuelta to its highest point, 2,501m above sea level.
Only podium contenders remained in the red jersey group once Harper swung off 15km, but the gaps between the top three men on general classification were measured in seconds rather than minutes at the summit. Mas picked up 36 seconds on Evenepoel, while Roglič helped himself to fifteen.
“The final climb probably isn’t an easy one to get away on so the fact that Primož did get away shows that he’s going super strong,” said Harper. “Coming up the final climb, you could save a lot of energy sitting on the wheels, especially with how the wind was.”
After unearthing Evenepoel’s hitherto unseen vulnerability at La Pandera, Jumbo-Visma doubtless sensed an opportunity to place the maillot rojo in more severe difficulty on the long haul to Sierra Nevada. “He was super excited yesterday, he’s starting to feel really good again and that’s showing in his numbers as well,” Harper said. “He’s reaching his level.”
But while Roglič struck another blow and snatched another clutch of seconds, Evenepoel stays standing and still holds a healthy buffer. Perhaps as pertinently, the final week of the Vuelta is light on setpiece mountain days.
The next stage of equivalent difficult comes on the penultimate day in the Sierras of Madrid, with a summit finish on the Puerto de Navacerrada. Roglič may be building up a head of steam, but he also risks running out of road.
“I’m a bit of a one stage at a time guy, I normally just have a look the night before, but the next really hard day I would say is stage 20,” Harper said. “That’s probably the next real big test but there’s always opportunity.”
