Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic won a record-tying fourth Vuelta a Espana, capping a 12-month stretch that included leaving his team of eight years and withdrawing during the Tour de France.
“It’s just a lot of sacrificing,” he said. “It’s not only me -- my family, everyone around. We all sacrifice. We all live for it.”
Roglic, 34, won Friday’s 19th Vuelta stage with a summit finish, erasing Ben O’Connor’s five-second edge in the overall standings and taking a lead of 1:54 of his own over the Australian.
Roglic expanded that to 2:02 on Saturday’s penultimate stage with another summit finish.
VUELTA A ESPANA: Final Standings
That was a very comfortable lead going into Sunday’s finale, a 15-mile time trial into Madrid. Roglic was second-fastest on the day behind Swiss Stefan Kueng and finished 2:36 ahead of O’Connor in the final overall standings.
Roglic tied the record of four Vuelta titles held by Spain’s Roberto Heras (2000, ’03-05).
The Vuelta is one of cycling’s three, three-week Grand Tours along with the Giro d’Italia (held in May) and the Tour de France (July).
Fellow Slovenian Tadej Pogacar won this year’s Giro and Tour and skipped the Vuelta. Rarely does a rider compete in all three Grand Tours in one season.
Slovenia, with the population size of New Mexico, became the first nation to sweep all three men’s Grand Tours in one year since Great Britain in 2018: Chris Froome (Giro), Geraint Thomas (Tour), Simon Yates (Vuelta).
In 2023, Roglic won the Giro. His team at the time — Jumbo-Visma — became the first team to win all three Grand Tours in one year, according to cycling media.
But Roglic had ceded the team leader role to Dane Jonas Vingegaard, the 2022 and 2023 Tour de France winner.
After the season, he moved to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, which had recorded one Grand Tour podium finish since its inception in 2010 (Jai Hindley’s 2022 Giro win).
At July’s Tour de France, Roglic crashed in stages 11 and 12 and withdrew before 13, his third consecutive Tour DNF. He shifted focus to the Vuelta, which he won in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
He became one of, if not the overall favorite with Tour podium finishers Pogacar, Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel skipping the season’s final Grand Tour.
American Sepp Kuss, last year’s Vuelta winner, finished six and a half minutes behind O’Connor on the sixth stage and continued to bleed time.
Over the last two weeks, Roglic reeled in O’Connor. He all but wrapped up the title Saturday amid what Bora-Hansgrohe director Patxi Vila called “a wave of illness” that struck teammates overnight.
If Roglic has designs on completing his Grand Tour trophy cabinet at the Tour de France, that will be a tougher task.
He is older than all but one previous Tour winner (Firmin Lambot, who won the 1922 Tour at age 36). Meanwhile, Pogacar is 25, Vingegaard is 27 and Evenepoel is 24.
