Roglic wins Tour de Romandie

Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo) has won the overall classification at the Tour de Romandie, beating Team Sky’s Egan Bernal to take the title. Meanwhile, Pascal Ackermann (Bora-Hansgrohe) took victory ahead of Michael Morkov (Quick-Step Floors) in a sprint finish in Geneva on the final day of racing.

Roglic had all but sealed his overall success on Saturday’s queen stage when he eked out a couple of extra seconds over Bernal by beating him in the sprint to the line. The final stage did not have the terrain to really test the general classification riders, but the LottoNL-Jumbo rider still had to keep an eye on his rival, particularly in the final when it looked like Bernal might try something before moving off in the final kilometre. As the sprinters battled it out for victory, Roglic eased over the line to take the title by eight seconds over Bernal.

“I think we are all really happy with this win. With the whole team I think that we showed we are really strong, we have really strong guys and it was a pleasure to work with them and to win in the end,” said Roglic.

“Every day was a really hard day. I think that the prologue helped to decide things and then the next day was hard, and of course, the mountain time trial and yesterday completed the racing here in the Tour of Romandie. “I was optimistic before [the time trial]. I was really strong before and it was nice to see that I could do a good job.”

Ackermann had been relatively anonymous throughout the Tour de Romandie as he battled to hang on in the mountains. With many sprinters heading home after missing the time cut in Friday’s time trial, the German was one of the major favourites for success on the last day of racing. He was given an inch-perfect lead-out by Rudiger Selig and backed that up with a powerful sprint to take his first win of the season.

“I never will forget it. Two weeks ago after the Amstel Gold Race, I said to my team manager that I will win one stage in Romandie. I’m so happy. It’s amazing,” Ackermann said after the finish. “The team made an amazing job not only today but on the other days because they had to carry me all over the mountains and it was not just about today.

“After yesterday, when we finished the stage we said now we win tomorrow. I had the best lead-out man in the race and he did an amazing job and the rest of the team did an amazing job. It was perfect. It was horrible the last days, I was dying every day but my team said we have to go and we made it to the finish.”

How it happened

After a relentless mountain stage on the penultimate day of action, the organisers allowed for a stage for the sprinters to close out the race. It wasn’t a straightforward day for the fast men, with three categorised climbs and undulating roads right until the finish.

Roglic started the day with the yellow jersey still on his back after withstanding multiple attacks from Bernal on stage 4. There’s never an easy day out at the Tour de Romandie but all the Slovenian had to do was finish to be crowned the 2018 champion. His team marshalled the start before eventually allowing five riders to form a breakaway. Pavel Sivakov (Team Sky), Winner Anacona (Movistar), Carlos Verona (Mitchelton-Scott), Alexis Gougeard (AG2R La Mondiale) and Michael Storer (Team Sunweb) moved clear after 10 kilometres of racing.

They were allowed to build an advantage of just over 3:30 before the peloton brought it back down to a more manageable 2:45 for the large part of the day. With the three categorised climbs dispatched within the first half of the stage, Bora-Hansgrohe and Bahrain-Merida took over the pace-setting from LottoNL-Jumbo for the remainder of the day.

With 30 kilometres remaining, the gap was hovering at just over a minute before Bahrain-Merida eased up and allowed it to grow out once again. Despite their best efforts, the break was eventually brought back with 11 kilometres to go. The sprint finish seemed inevitable, but EF Education First-Drapac had other thoughts and William Clarke launched a short-lived move with eight kilometres to go.

Once Clarke was back in the fold, the teams shuffled into colour order before the fast sprint into Geneva. Bahrain-Merida did a big turn to position Sonny Colbrelli but the Italian found himself out of position when the other sprinters kicked out. Ackermann had no such bad luck after a great effort from his own team to deliver him into the perfect position. All he had to do was charge for the line and he did that, beating second-placed Morkov by a long way.

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