MOHORIC IS A SLOW BURNER

It feels like Matej Mohoric has been knocking around for years. He was junior road world champion in 2012, U23 road world champion a year later and turned pro in 2014. This is his ifth season in the top light, but he still won’t be 24 until late October. Now he’s starting to deliver on that initial precocity. He won his irst grand tour stage at the Vuelta in 2017 and followed that with a victory in the Giro this year. In 2018, he won the GP Larciano in the spring, the Slovenian road race Championships, the opening stage of the Tour of Austria, the BinckBank Tour - his irst stage race win - and then a stage and the overall at the Deutschland Tour. After taking the BinckBank Tour leader’s jersey, Mohoric explained: “When

I turned pro I was just a little kid, I was just 19 years old, so I took some time to get used to the next level. It was a big, big step for me. Those irst three years were not the best for me but step by step, I started to improve.”

Bahrain team leader, Vincenzo Nibali, predicts a golden future for Mohoric. “When he has the freedom to do his own race, he almost never makes a mistake, and when he works for the team, he dedicates himself 100 per cent to that,” he said. “He’s a complete rider and it’s di icult to know what his limits are because he can still develop a lot.” The next point of interest will be if he races the cobbled Classics next year.