Tour de France 2020: Flawless Primoz Roglic is poised to win the Tour de France – Bradley Wiggins

Updated 07/09/2020 at 09:00 GMT

Primoz Roglic is in the yellow jersey after Stage 9 of the Tour de France and Bradley Wiggins believes he is the clear favourite to win the race.

Team Jumbo rider Slovenia's Primoz Roglic (L) celebrates after becoming the overall leader with Team Jumbo rider US Sepp Kuss at the end of the 9th stage of the 107th edition of the Tour de France cycling race, 154 km between Pau and Laruns, on September

Image credit: Getty Images

Primoz Roglic enjoyed a superb day in the saddle as Stage 9 of the Tour de France saw plenty of action in the General Classification standings.

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A fast and aggressive tempo, set primarily by Roglic’s Jumbo-Visma, saw the field whittled right down in the Pyrenees until only a handful of the biggest hitters remained in the yellow jersey group.

The pace proved too much for Adam Yates, who was dropped (although he remains inside the top ten after a brave response) and Roglic went on to finish second in the stage to secure the overall lead.

Tour de France Stage 9 as it happened

And Wiggins told Dan Lloyd in the Breakaway that it may not have been the plan for Jumbo to take the maillot jaune quite this early, but having it is a result of a superb opening week by their team leader.

“He’s in the yellow jersey and his team have done a magnificent job in putting him in that position,” Wiggins said.

You can’t choose when you take the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, it comes to you. And the reason it’s come him is because he’s been flawless this whole race, he hasn’t missed a beat.

“Primoz is very level-headed, he’s used to being in yellow don’t forget, he’s won a lot of stage races over the last 18 months, he won the Vuelta last year. He’s poised now to win the Tour de France.”

Roglic has been flawless and is comfortable being in yellow - Wiggins

There are plenty of tests to come, with a big weekend of climbing in a week’s time. But, with the race-defining time trial on La Planche des Belles Filles being the race’s penultimate stage, Wiggins believes that anyone hoping to beat Roglic will need to open up a sizeable gap before then.

“I wouldn’t like to be too close to Primoz Rogic on GC going into that last time trial, so there’s a lot that’s got to happen now for riders to attack him,” Wiggins said.

But as we saw last year, particularly with Steven Kruijswijk, it was almost like he was riding to get on the podium he was happy to get third, and he never really challenged Bernal and the like for anything higher than that.

“Lots of riders are content to do that now, it’s how much people believe that they can beat Roglic and how much they’re willing to push the boat out in order to win the race and risk losing everything. A lot of people now ride for position, fifth, fourth, third in the Tour de France, which I’ve noticed has happened a lot in the last few years.”