Primoz Roglic rode to Giro lead in a 68-tooth chainring - "I managed… though I don’t know how"

More and more nowadays riders are taking on bigger chainrings in the time-trials so as to power through with a higher pace in the flat roads. This leads to some quite astonishing gear ratios and Primoz Roglic has revealed which one he was riding towards the pink jersey.

"Not really. I mostly wanted to lose as little time as possible. I didn’t think this was the kind of time trial that suited me best, but in the end, I actually enjoyed it," Roglic said in a press conference following the win, as reported by IDLProCycling. "It was tough out there, but time trials always are."

Roglic missed out on the win by a mere second on Joshua Tarling, but was faster than all the riders who had ridden in the peloton on stage 1 and so he jumped into the race lead. He did so with a chainring of... "68. The heavy gearing isn’t the problem, it’s the force I need to apply that makes it hard. But I managed… though I don’t know how!"

The Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe is not going to try and hang on to the race lead with maximum focus yet as he does not want to burn his team before the key stages of the race, but is equally not diappointed with not having taken the stage win already in Tirana:

"Of course you always want to win, but it doesn’t really matter that much to me whether I win or not. I’m too old for that now. I’m healthy and I’m performing, so this pink jersey is a nice surprise for me. I’m satisfied."

This is also fruit of the work put in during the winter, where new staff was brought into the team including former INEOS Grenadiers aerodynamics expert Dan Bigham. "Yes, of course. We’ve put a lot of work into it. Dan and especially John Wakefield have a lot of expertise. But we also need time to bring all those smart minds together and optimize things. We’re working on it, and we’ll see how far we can go. So far, it’s going well."