Primoz Roglic drops Remco Evenepoel to win and lead at Criterium du Dauphine: "I finally won a race, it took a while"

Primoz Roglic left the Collet d'Allevard an happy man today. He had won the time-trial at the Itzulia Basque Country but did not celebrate on the bike (and crashed out a few days later). Today, at the Criterium du Dauphiné, he finally took his first road stage win of the season and it was with an impressive performance on stage 6.

“I am quite limited by my left shoulder, but my legs worked. I can’t complain about that," Roglic said in a post-race interview.“I finally won a race, it took a while. Everyone in the team was very involved, right from the first day here in the Dauphiné. We hunted for a stage win, but it didn’t work out in the second stage. And yesterday almost everyone crashed badly, but today was a great performance. We can enjoy it for today.”

BORA - hansgrohe remained safe throughout a day that was mostly calm, but had a very tense descent right before the final climb. The German team didn't expose itself too much, with Lidl-Trek and Soudal - Quick-Step taking responsibility over chasing down the breakaway. On the final climb INEOS opened the race and Aleksandr Vlasov followed an attack from Laurens de Plus. The pressure was off of Roglic's shoulders, who followed the attack of Giulio Ciccone and the pacing of Derek Gee later in the climb.

But the Slovenian knew what to do and had the legs to make it happen. With under two kilometers to go he bridged across to his teammate, who would then leadout Roglic and Ciccone into the final meters. A classic Roglic performance, he sprinted to victory atop the 11-kilometer climb, whilst Remco Evenepoel was nowhere to be seen down the mountain.

Hence, Roglic is the new race leader of the Dauphiné. “Let's first go back to basics. First finish and stay upright, everything else is a bonus," he concludes the interview, still putting down expectations of the final win and pressure off his (injured) shoulder. He leads Evenepoel by 19 seeconds into stage 7 and is the main favourite to win the overall classification.