A Beaten Man
Writer: Barry Ryan
PROCYCLING - November 2020
Nothing transfigures a raider like defeat. For three weeks, Primož Roglič had looked a fitting winner of a socially distanced Tour de France. Cautious in his tactics, guarded in his comments and safely shielded by the strongest team in the race, he kept everybody at arm’s length. Then, in the space of 36.2 kilometres of hard road in the Haute-Sadne, all changed utterly. On the Tour’s penultimate day, the detached impregnability of the champion suddenly gave way to the vulnerability of the human.
Nothing marked that transition quite like the new helmet that was perched atop Roglic’s head during the fateful final time trial. As he readied himself on the start ramp in Lure, eyes hidden behind a tinted visor, the headwear seemed like the latest demonstration of his Jumbo-Visma team’s commitment to eking out the most incremental of advantages.
By the time Roglič reached the upper slopes of La Planche des Belles Filles, the cutting-edge technology had transformed into a flimsy accoutrement, a symbol of futility. The seemingly undersized helmet appeared to be slipping backwards, while the discarded visor exposed an ashen face and a bewildered gaze. Ina race that hitherto had been calculated to the second, Roglič was now in the process of conceding almost two minutes to his direct rival.
When Laurent Fignon lost the Tour to Greg LeMond on the Champs-Elysées in 1989, the result was in doubt until the dying metres. Here, the balance tipped decisively in Tadej Pogacar’s favour barely a third of the way up La Planche des Belles Filles. For Roglič, the final four kilometres must have felt like a nightmare from which he could not awake.
At the finish, his team-mates Tom Dumoulin and Wout Van Aert watched events unfold on the big screen in quiet disbelief, The Tour was lost by the time Pogacar screeched to a halt past their vantage point, but the defeat was only confirmed mathematically a few minutes later, as Roglič entered the final 300 metres. Though beaten, he continued struggling against the gradient until he flopped across the finish line like a drowning man hauled gasping to the shore. That didn’t bring an end to the suffering, of course. It merely changed its form, from physical to psychological.
Roglič dismounted and sat on the roadside, chest heaving, legs splayed. A soigneur discreetly snatched away the helmet, while Roglic wiped the saliva from his chin and stared into space, in confusion as much as in sadness. It was a place beyond words. Dumoulin, who knows what it is to lose a grand tour on the final weekend, crouched beside Roglic and draped an arm around his shoulder. “Primoz did a good TT - not his best, but a good one ~ and we thought a good TT would be enough, but apparently not, Dumoulin would say afterwards, unable to mask his incredulity.
As soon as he could muster the strength, Roglič rose to his feet and staggered towards the television tent by the podium. He had given daily post-stage interviews in that very spot as the yellow jersey, saying as near to nothing as he could get away with. Now, as he interrupted Pogacar’s first interview as the Tour winner in waiting, one gesture seemed to reveal more thana fortnight of terse statements. Roglič hugged his fellow Slovenian, gently murmured his congratulations, exhaled, and then drew away. He shook his head and gave a thumbs up as he did so, amesh of disappointment and dignity.
DESTINY CALLING
Since winning the Vuelta a España last year, Roglič had seemed the man most likely to challenge the Ineos Tour hegemony. They certainly thought so in Slovenia, as evidenced by the crowds that turned out to watch him at June’s National Championships. “I never saw so many spectators there before. Maybe it was because of the pandemic, but people were hungry for sports? says Uros Gramc of Slovenian newspaper Vecer. Roglič sent the masses home happy by powering to the road race title on the haul to Ambroz pod Krvavec, though his narrow defeat to Pogacar in the time trial sowed some doubts. “People started asking if Tadej was better than him? says Gramc.
Such thoughts were forgotten when Roglič dominated the Tour de Ain, where Jumbo-Visma squeezed the life out of the opposition. The template was reapplied at the Critérium du Dauphiné, where Roglič won on the Col de la Porte and led the race until forced to abandon after crashing heavily with a day to go.
Although Roglič arrived at the grand départ with his left arm wrapped in gauze, he showed no ill effects once the Tour got underway. The August races appeared to cause more lasting damage at Ineos, where Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome were omitted from the Tour line-up, while defending champion Egan Bernal reckoned with both a niggling back injury and the nagging sense that in Roglic, he was coming up against an opponent who had his number.
That impression only intensified in the opening phase of the Tour. At Orciéres-Merlette, Van Aert and Sepp Kuss imposed Jumbo’s order and Roglic sprinted to stage victory. He would assume yellow in the Pyrenees, press home his supremacy on Puy Mary and then distance Bernal definitively on the mammoth haul up the Grand Colombier on stage 15.
In the 21st century, the perceived probity of the maillot jaune and his team tends to double as a Rorschach test for the health of cycling at large, and Roglič might have felt he had been anointed the presumptive Tour winner at his press conference that evening, when he was asked if he was competing clean. “Yeah, I am. I have nothing to hide? said Roglic, who later confirmed his use of ketones.
Questions from his first seasons in the WorldTour re-emerged late in the third week, when Jumbo-Visma directeur sportif Merijn Zeeman was excluded from the Tour after insulting the commissaire who inspected Roglič’s bike after the summit
finish on the Col dela Loze on stage 17. Zeeman’s outburst was all the more ill-judged given the insinuations that had been cast Roglič’s way in 2016, though the rider himself handled the controversy with his usual aloof caim. “I was not present when it happened so it’s really hard to comment on any of this) he said.
By then, Roglič had outlasted a determined Pogacar on the vicious final ramps of the Col de la Loze and he could percha friendly arm across his compatriot’s back after they had negotiated the gravel sector atop the Plateau de Gliéres the next day. He had maintained enough physical distancing across the Tour to enter the final weekend with a buffer of 57 seconds. The race seemed won.
CALCULATIONS
The coronation was abruptly cancelled at La Planche des Belles Filles and repiaced by an inquest, though in the pages of L’Equipe, Eddy Merckx saw little need to go rummaging through the wreckage in search of the black box when an obvious explanation lay in plain sight. “[Jumbo-Visma] raced stupidly. They dominated, controlled everything, except they forgot one guy, this little 21-year-old who was only 50 seconds down” Merckx said. “They got caught in their own trap, they were asking for it.” Deceuninck- Quick Step manager Patrick Lefevere was of a similar mind, deeming their strategy to have been “almost arrogant”.
In Mantes-la—Jolie ahead of the final stage, Jumbo-Visma manager Richard Plugge acknowledged that he small buffer over Pogacar was insufficient, but only because the youngster delivered an outsized performance in the time trial.
“We were stunned. We thought 57 seconds would be enough, he admitted. “It was a mistake to think that. That’s clear. We were really surprised in what we saw, because it wasn’t Roglic’s best time trial, but it also wasn’t his worst.”
Earlier in the race, when Jumbo-Visma were dictating the terms of engagement on all terrains, Plugge proudly accepted comparisons between his squad and the great Dutch football team of the 1970s. Van Aert, winner of two bunch sprints and often Roglič’s most precious mountain domestique, seemed the personification of Plugge’s vision of ‘Total Cycling’. “The Dutch national team played collectively, with everybody at the highest level, and that’s what we want to do too? he told L’Equipe.
The problem was that, rather like Johan Cruyff et al in the 1974 World Cup final, Jumbo-Visma seemed so intent on humiliating their opponents that they neglected to win the match. The Netherlands went a goal up inside two minutes against West
Germany, dominated possession and then contrived to lose 2-1. Jumbo-Visma put Roglič in the maillot jaune in the Pyrenees and regularly showcased their collective might, but that superiority never translated into an unassailable advantage.
Given the magnitude of Bernal’s eventual collapse, it is remarkable to think that his deficit to Roglic in the first 12 stages was composed entirely of time bonuses. Bernal was already visibly struggling when Jumbo-Visma blew the race apart on the Col de Peyresourde on stage 8, but Roglič was strangely hesitant to goon the offensive. Crucially, he also preferred not to track an acceleration by Pogacar, who had lost 1:21 in the crosswinds the previous day at Lavaur.
It would be tempting to link Roglič’s tactical conservatism to a key moment in his origin story, namely the ski-jumping crash in Planica in 2007 that signalled the beginning of the end of his first sporting career. “I didn’t have the respect or the fear that I needed’? Roglic once said of that incident. In truth, at least as much of the caution at this Tour seemed to be emanating from his team car.
There was a sense of déja vu about Jumbo’s race management and, especially, their tendency to think days in advance rather than focus on the here and now. At the 2019 Giro, worried by their relative lack of climbing strength, Jumbo-Visma effectively engineered Richard Carapaz’s passage into the pink jersey at Courmayeur. He would never relinquish it, while Roglic never posed the same threat after frittering away a three-minute lead on the Ecuadorian rider.
Once Roglič took yellow on this Tour, he and his team seemed to prioritise saving energy over gaining time, preferring to increase the advantage in small increments rather than trying to deliver a knock-out blow before the time trial. The Slovenian emerged from the cover of teammates only fleetingly, notably at Puy Mary and the Col de Ja Loze. As Paris drew closer, Roglič looked destined to win his bout with Pogacar on points in the deft manner of Floyd Mayweather, but words attributed to another exponent of the sweet science, Mike Tyson, came to mind when the older man was dispatched to the canvas at La Planche des Belles Filles: everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Cruelly for Roglič , the crucial hit came on the penultimate day. There was no time to lift himself and fight back, but this was no sucker punch. Pogacar had already served warning in the Pyrenees. Jumbo-Visma made tactical missteps, but maybe no strategy could have catered for Pogacar’s startling power in the final reckoning. “We walked into the wall that’s called Pogacar? Plugge said. “He was really strong, and we have to live with that.”
ROGLIC'S VICTORIES - 41 all time wins
Stages:
Tour de France 2020, 2018, 2017
Criterium du Dauphiné 2020
Tour de l'Ain 2020 (2)
Vuelta a Espana 2019
Giro d'Italia 2019 (2), 2016
Tour de Romandie 2019 (3), 2017
UAE Tour 2019
Tour of Slovenia 2018 (2), 2015
Tirreno-Adriatico 2018
Itzulia Basque Country 2018, 2017 (2)
Ster ZLM 2017
Jour of Qinghai Lake 2015
Tour dAzerbaidjan 2015 (2)
Stage race GC:
Jour de l'Ain2020
Vuelta a Espafia 2019
Tour de Romandie 2019, 2018
Tireno-Adriatico 2019
UAE Tour 2019
Tourof Slovenia 2018, 2015
Itzulia Basque Country 2018
Volta a Algarve 2017
Tour dAzerbaidjan 2015
One-day races:
National Championships road race 2020
Tre Valli Varesine 2019
Giro dell'Emiia 2019
National Championships time trial 2016
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