Calmly, Craftily, Inevitably, Roglič Wins Record-Tying Fourth Vuelta

The game began on stage 6, when Ben O’Connor (AG2R Decathlon La Mondiale) was allowed to ride in a breakaway and then go on a brilliant solo to beat Roglič and most of the other GC favorites by an astonishing 6:31. The 28-year-old Aussie took over the race leader’s red jersey from Roglič and led him by a whopping 4:51.

Commentators were quick to criticize the team for what looked like a colossal tactical error. And Red Bull staff members agreed. “Things got out of hand,” team manager Patxi Vila told Cyclingnews. “Things didn’t play out as we wanted.”

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Roglič played his part by complaining about pains in his back due to the fractured vertebra he suffered in the Tour de France, which forced him to abandon that race. “It was tough,” he had told Eurosport earlier, after winning stage 4 and taking over the race lead for the first time. “I felt definitely the back after some hours. We’ll have to see. Hopefully it doesn’t [get] worse.”

Wink, wink.

Later, after reducing O’Connor’s GC lead on stage 13, he moaned, “It’s nice to gain something. But I feel [the back].”

Nudge, nudge.

Why the chicanery? Well, for one thing, it saved Roglič the time-consuming hassle of dealing with the press after every stage, which he would have been obliged to do if he had been the race leader. That pleasure was O’Connor’s onus – and he was even docked 20 UCI points for coming late to one of these media events.

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The more important reason for Roglič not riding in the red jersey was that neither he nor his team had to defend it. They could all ride in the middle of the peloton, pulled through the heat and over the mountains by other teams, notably O’Connor’s AG2R, who were obliged to control breakaways and subvert attacks by the teams of other GC contenders.

As for Roglič, he hardly ever broke a sweat, despite temperatures in the first week that reached 40°C (104°F). Yet he whittled away at O’Connor’s lead whenever possible, without ever really going at 100%, until at the end of Thursday’s stage 17, it had been reduced to a mere 5 seconds. Roglič and Red Bull were never really worried. O’Connor had a wonderful Vuelta but, an excellent rider that he is, he was never a match for the 34-year-old Slovenian.

When stage 19 began, Red Bull finally took control of the race, riding harder than they’d done in the previous 18 stages, because they were still relatively fresh. On the climb to the summit finish of the Alto de Moncalvillo (8.6km @ 8.9%, with ramps of up to 16% in the final 5 km), the team’s mountain domestiques took over.

First, with about 5.8km left to ride, Dani Martínez set a blistering pace as he led Roglič up the climb, a pace the small group of GC rivals was unable to follow. Then, with 5.3km left to climb, Aleksandr Vlasov took over and continued the assault on the red jersey, widening the gap to his leader’s rivals.

Some 600 meters farther up the mountain, Roglič tore off the disguise of the hobbled warrior he’d been wearing and revealed the Superman costume underneath. By that time, he had already taken over the virtual race lead. Fifteen minutes later, he crossed the finish line, winning his third stage of this year’s Vuelta, and 15th Vuelta stage win overall, and officializing his superiority.

Surprisingly, Roglič said the plan had not been to win the stage. “I said I don’t need the stage. But – I will not say their names – but some guys decided we don’t listen to you anyway, we pull. We have nothing else to do. I had to make a call and I say, ‘Okay, we have to all be on the same side, then we go for it.’”

Asked if, with a lead of 1:54 and only two stages left to race, he had now as good as won the race, he replied, “Not really.”

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

In many ways, stage 20 was a carbon copy of many of the preceding mountain stages, with a select group of the usual GC suspects climbing to another difficult summit finish, in this case the Picón Blanca (8km @ 9%). With a lead of 1:54 over the now second-place O’Connor, Roglič only had to finish with the group, which he did without, again, seeming to break a sweat.

However, it could easily have gone south because teammates Vlasov, Martinez, Nico Denz, and Patrick Gamper were ill, reportedly from food poisoning, and all except Vlasov dropped out of the race mid-stage. What suspense left in the race concerned the podium finishes, with O’Connor riding bravely to maintain his second place over Enric Mas (Movistar) by a mere 9 seconds.

All that now remained was for Roglič to ride his usual solid time trial in the final stage to make Vuelta history. But he wasn’t done playing the game. “I always say that I am not a time trial specialist,” he said with a poker face, “so I really have to give everything I have.” Never mind that in the stage 1 time trial, he had finished well ahead of all his GC rivals except João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates).

On Sunday, he finished second, 31 seconds behind Groupama-FDJ’s Swiss speedster Stefan Küng, who won his first-ever Grand Tour stage. Roglič’s final winning margin over O’Connor was 2:36, with Mas completing the podium, at 3:13.

With some 65, 000m of altitude gained, this Vuelta was supremely entertaining and, thanks to the Red Bull strategy, more suspenseful than it might have been. Because, let’s face it, Roglič was, by far, the best rider in this peloton. He is the third-best Grand Tour rider in the world, behind Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, and he was the only rider in the race who had won a Grand Tour. Class always wins races and, barring accident or illness, Roglič was always going to win this race.

But it’s a shame that Almeida had to drop out of the race after stage 8 due to Covid. He would have provided a real test for the winner. O’Connor was brave and richly deserved his podium finish. The other GC contenders – Mas (who finished third in the GC), Richard Carapaz (EF Education – EasyPost) and Mikel Landa (Soudal– Quick Step) – were always aiming for just a podium finish. They were the real victims of O’Connor’s early big lead. Unlike Roglič, they were simply not good enough to make up for that time lost on stage 6.

All those mountain stages certainly added to the spectacle. They provided drama on nearly every stage and big surprises, none greater than the three stage wins taken by the second-division team Kern Pharma, which received a special wild-card invitation to ride in the race.

The two victories by the rocking-and-rolling 23-year-old Pablo Castrillo (stages 12 and 15) and the stage 18 victory by Urko Berrate represented the first-ever World Tour victories for the riders and their team. They were this Vuelta’s big feel-good story.

Final GC Standings