Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic sealed a record-equalling fourth Vuelta a España title on Sunday after retaining his overall lead in the final stage of the race, a 24.6km individual time-trial in Madrid that was won by Stefan Küng.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s Roglic reclaimed the red jersey from the Australian rider Ben O’Connor with a devastating solo attack on stage 19 on Friday and the Slovenian never looked back as he equalled the Spaniard Roberto Heras’s record of four Vuelta wins.
When Roglic crossed the line, he pointed a finger to the sky and smiled as he finished with an overall lead of 2min 36sec over O’Connor while the Spaniard Enric Mas of Movistar was third.
“It is just a lot of sacrificing, it’s not only me,” Roglic said. “My family, everyone around me – we all sacrifice, we all live for it. I just feel happy actually that I could do it and I really appreciate the support. The more you get to the end [of the Tour], you just want to finish it off and it was tough. But everything went fine, I was fast, so I’m happy.”
Victory was all the more special for Roglic, who was forced to abandon the Tour de France before stage 13 after the yellow jersey contender crashed twice in consecutive stages.
Roglic, who won three consecutive Vuelta titles from 2019, came into this year’s race as the clear favourite, with the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and the Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel opting not to ride in Spain.
However, he was surprised by O’Connor when the Decathlon-AG2R-La Mondiale rider took the red jersey from him on stage six and opened up a gap of nearly five minutes. But Roglic, nicknamed the “Slovenian dream crusher”, slowly clawed his way back and put one hand on the title in stage 19 on the summit finish of Alto de Moncalvillo.
“I expected to be good [at the start of the Vuelta] because I knew I was, but not second overall,” O’Connor said. “Sometimes you’ve got to trust your gut and other times you could probably be a little bit smarter and not trust your gut as well. So I think it’s about picking your moments in grand tours and that’s probably the thing I’m taking away.”
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Roglic was the last rider out for the final stage and the Tokyo Olympics time-trial gold medallist finished with a time of 26min 59sec, good enough for second after the Swiss cyclist Küng went 31sec faster.
“It’s amazing, finally. I’ve waited, I’ve been fighting for it for a very long time and I really wanted that win today,” Küng said. “I suffered a lot but I think everyone did at the end of this hard Vuelta … It’s always nice if you win with more than half a minute, it shows you were absolutely the best. It was no coincidence today.”
