🇪🇸 #itzulia Stage 5 is done and it was a tough one🥵
Primoz Roglic started the day in the yellow jersey, and until today Jumbo-Visma seemed to be in control of Itzulia Basque Country, which is why it was a surprise to see Primoz Roglic unreactive to the attack of Remco Evenepoel in the latter part of today's stage, making for a loss of over a minutes which has seen the Slovenian tumble down the Top10.
"We were in a good situation in which we took our responsibility. In the final we were able to work together with several teams," team DS Marc Reef said after the stage. Sepp Kuss had been in the day's breakaway, but struggled early on and couldn't help the team leader when the time came, whilst Jonas Vingegaard followed the attack, but in the final meters tumbled in the brutally steep gradients and lost some seconds on the competition.
"Then Jonas got in front because he reacted alertly to an attack. The gap increased quickly and Jonas was ready to launch his final sprint. He felt he was on the way to a good result until the incident with Vlasov. A real shame because otherwise he would have been better placed in the GC," Reef added.
The GC is far from decided though. Tomorrow will be the queen stage of the race, Vingegaard sits 29 seconds down on Remco Evenepoel whilst Primoz Roglic 1:05 minutes down. They will have the road to make that deficit down, and will surely be fond of the longer climbs that will be on the menu.
"The toughest stage. Jonas has shown that he can compete uphill. Primoz is still among the first ten of the general classification, but he has already fallen behind. Yet nothing is lost. We'll go for it tomorrow," he completed.
🇪🇸 #itzulia Stage 5 is done and it was a tough one🥵