La Vuelta 2022: Did Primoz Roglic miss a chance to gain time on Remco Evenepoel on Stage 13?
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Updated 02/09/2022 at 17:18 GMT
Remco Evenepoel maintained his 2’41” lead over Remco Evenepoel and 3’03” advantage on Enric Mas after Friday’s punchy finish. But, The Breakaway’s Dan Lloyd believes Roglic missed an opportunity to take precious time away from Evenepoel on Stage 13. Stream La Vuelta live and on-demand on discovery+. You can also watch all the action live on eurosport.co.uk.
Watch Pedersen win first ever La Vuelta stage in style
As Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) stormed to a maiden La Vuelta victory, the general classification contenders finished together although Dan Lloyd believes Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) missed a chance to gain some time on Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl).
Roglic was initially put into a good position with 1km to go but he was blocked at the final turn as the road began to climb and other riders overtook him.
Going into the weekend’s two summit finishes, Roglic is 2’41” behind Evenepoel who has held the red jersey since Stage 6.
“In the end Roglic is left kind of isolated and he gets blocked a little bit later on where he loses a lot of his speed and momentum,” said Lloyd on The Breakaway.
“On a day like today where you’ve got that uphill finish it takes so much strength and power and energy to get your speed back up again.
“It was interesting that Remco and quite a few of the other general classification riders were a little bit further back by the time we got to the finish because had Roglic had a better run of things towards the line, maybe he was able to stay close to Pedersen, and then there was a split - we saw the distance between Pedersen, to [Bryan] Coquard, to [Pascal] Ackermann to Fred Wright.
“Had Roglic been up there and round there, he could have potentially taken a five, 10, 15-second gap depending on where that gap appeared.”
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La Vuelta Stage 13 highlights: Pedersen brings wait for stage win to an end in style
Adam Blythe feels Roglic’s form hasn’t changed, when asked by Orla Chennaoui if Roglic’s ninth place and good initial positioning on Stage 13 was a sign of confidence from Jumbo-Visma.
“Those finishes for Primoz are his bread and butter,” said Blythe. “He can do them brilliantly. His form in terms of what he’s got so far, I think is pretty much what he’s got from what we’ve seen.
“It might improve a little bit. He might have a really good day. But Primoz can do those finishes day in day out.
“It’s a two minute effort where he has to go really hard, and we know how good he is at them. I’m not going to say it’s easy for him, but the positioning with his team, making everything so much easier for him, I don’t think we can read too much into it sadly.”
Lloyd added: “I would disagree because they’ve got Mike Teunissen there and the fact that they put pretty much everything into Primoz Roglic today, might not necessarily have been just for the aim of the stage win, but to try and get some time back on general classification.”
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Stream La Vuelta live and on-demand on discovery+. You can also watch all the action live on eurosport.co.uk.
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