Sensational Tour stage win for former ski-jump champ Roglic
FORMER champion ski-jumper Primoz Roglic took a sensational solo victory on the mountainous 183km 17th stage of the Tour de France yesterday.
Chris Froome came home third to stretch his overall lead to 27 seconds as Rigoberto Uran moved up to second and Fabio Aru dropped to fourth, with Romain Bardet remaining third.
Slovenia’s Roglic, 27, was junior world ski-jumping champion in 2007, but switched to cycling in 2012.
“To win a stage, I’ve dreamt about it many times,” Roglic said.
His girlfriend and family were at the finish of the Tour’s “Queen” stage’, which started in La Mure.
“There are no words. Right now I cannot really form all these feelings. Later probably I will know how big it is.”
He was part of an initial 33-man breakaway that was whittled down to just six riders when Roglic attacked solo 6.4km from the summit of the hors category Col du Galibier, which at more than 2 600m above sea level was the highest point of this year’s Tour.
He crested the climb, 28km from the finish in Serre-Chevalier, with a lead of just over a 1½ minutes on a group of chasers including the top contenders.
On the descent, Roglic easily managed his lead while a fiveman chase group developed, including Froome. But Italian Aru, who started the day second at 18sec, had been dropped by an acceleration from Bardet just before the Galibier summit and he was chasing desperately to limit his losses.
Uran took second, 1min 13sec behind Roglic, to snatch six bonus seconds that moved him up to second, on the same time as Bardet.
Froome also took four bonus seconds for finishing third to help increase his lead, and he revealed he had been congratulated by French President Emmanuel Macron at the finish.
“It’s a great honour to be congratulated by the president,” Froome, 32, said.
“It’s also a very good thing for the Tour and the sport that he came here.
“My legs are better than in the Pyrenees. “Today I felt good.” Aru came in 31sec later to drop to fourth at 53sec ahead of today’s second straight Alpine stage with its brutal finish at the summit of the imposing Col d’Izoard.
Briton Simon Yates was one of the first to struggle on the climb and eventually lost a couple of minutes to see his lead in the young riders’ competition ahead of South African Louis Meintjes cut to 2min 28sec. – AFP