2024 Criterium du Dauphine: Primoz Roglic firmly back to his best with second straight summit stage win

In a thrilling finale to stage 7 of the 2024 Criterium du Dauphine, Primoz Roglic has gone back to back with his stage wins to further strengthen his hold on the Maillot Jaune.

With a 1st category climb coming in the opening 30 kilometres, a big and strong group got themselves free from the peloton. Included in the group of around 10 were the likes of Lorenzo Fortunato, Koen Bouwman, Warren Barguil, Guillaume Martin and best placed in terms of the general classification, Marc Soler who started the day 3:45 down on Primoz Roglic.

By the time they had summited the second categorised climb of the day, the break had stretched their advantage to around four minutes over the peloton, putting Soler into the virtual race lead. Perhaps realising this, the UAE Team Emirates leader attacked clear of his breakaway rivals on the penultimate climb, pushing his advantage up over the five-minute mark from the peloton, with his nearest chasers over a minute and a half down at the top of the climb.

With a short flat before the final climb of the day, BORA - hansgrohe began to accelerate on the front of the peloton. Soler though was keeping strong himself though, and by the foot of the final climb, the Spaniard had a lead of two minutes over the remainder of the day's breakaway with the peloton around 4:20 behind the lone leader.

Once the climbing began, with BORA setting a fierce pace, the likes of Jack Haig, Pavel Sivakov and Remco Evenepoel were all beginning to struggle at the back of the Maillot Jaune group. With the likes of Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov taking over the pace-setting, Evenepoel was dropped with 7km to go, and by 5km to go, Soler's lead had been cut to under two minutes. So no Maillot Jaune for Soler, but could the UAE Team Emirates man hold on for the stage win? With 3km to go, Soler's lead was at just 55 seconds and shortening. Evenepoel meanwhile, had stabilised his own time gap a further minute down the road. As Soler then started to properly tie up, the chase group quickly closed the distance, ending Soler's day out front with 2km to go. 

Entering the final kilometre, just nine riders remained in the front group. Vlasov was still setting a destructive pace on the front though. With 600m to go, Santiago Buitrago set a testy attack with Oier Lazkano first on the wheel although Laurens De Plus was shifted from the group. Then, when Primoz Roglic laucnhed, Matteo Jorgenson was fighting hard to stay in the wheel but there was no stopping the Maillot Jaune wearing Slovenian.