Thijs Zonneveld about Primoz Roglic's dark day at Giro: "It's always been his weakness"

Primoz Roglic has been severely underwhelming throughout the first two weeks of the Giro d'Italia, and even solid rides against the clock can't hide that fact anymore. Even though riders are yet to fact the stages projected as decisive, the Slovenian finds himself already almost four minutes behind the Maglia Rosa.

For a long time, he could only guess whether the always-calm Roglic was really not in his best, or just patiently awaiting the big mountains of third week. "I think we can now conclude that it's option 1," Thijs Zonneveld analyzes in the podcast In de Waaier, after the Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe leader lost minute and a half in a relatively easy finish of stage 15.

"He's just not that good," the Dutchman doesn't pick words. "That's not a particularly difficult climb. They're riding at an average speed of 30 kilometers per hour, which gives you an advantage if you're in the group. But he's simply being dropped; he's one of the weakest in that group."

Of course it's not like Roglic arrived to Giro d'Italia in such poor form. It shouldn't be underestimated that the Slovenian hit the deck a couple times already, most notably during the gravel stage 9, but also two days later during time trial recon and he wasn't spared even in Nova Gorica carnage of stage 14. "He's had a few bad crashes, so he was actually hanging on by a thread. On such a day, when it's so hard all day long, he's bound to break down at some point."

But Zonneveld also looks at things from a wider perspective, noting that Roglic was historically less convincing in long, hard mountain stages. "It's always been his weakness."

But one thing he was always phenomenal at was that final kilometer, that kick to the line that won him so many stages. "Roglic is really good at short bursts of effort between 5 minutes and half an hour. That has been his great specialty. Over the years, and with the change of team, you can see that the absolute sharpness of that sprint is gone. He didn't show that Roglic finish in the Giro, where he crushes everyone in the last 100 meters, not once."