Vuelta a Espana

Roglic makes up further ground with stage win

Primoz Roglic(Bild: AFP or licensors)

The Slovenian Primoz Roglic won the eighth stage of the Vuelta a Espana on Saturday. With his second stage win, the Red Bull star made up some ground on the leader Ben O'Connor, who was left behind on the final climb to Cazorla. 

His Decathlon teammate Felix Gall supported the slightly weakening Australian to the best of his ability and finished eleventh on the stage (+34 seconds). Gall slipped back one place to tenth in the overall classification.

O'Connor lost 46 seconds to Roglic on the mid-mountain stage through the province of Jaen (159 km) in 17th place. The three-time winner of the Tour of Spain was once again in a class of his own in the uphill sprint, relegating the Spanish rider Enric Mas to second place in his 14th Vuelta stage win. However, Roglic is still 3:49 minutes behind O'Connor in the overall classification. Movistar pro Mas is now third, four and a half minutes behind, while Gall is only around a minute down on the Spaniard. The ranking could change significantly on Sunday on the very tough stage through the Sierra Nevada with 4,500 meters of climbing. This will be followed by the first rest day.

While Roglic gradually shook off his rivals on the five-kilometre final climb and collected the last breakaway riders, Gall set the pace for the obviously weaker O'Connor. In the last few meters, the East Tyrolean managed to catch the Australian. Some of the aces were held up by a crash right at the start of the final climb, including Roglic's noble helper Alexander Vlasov. Joao Almeida (UAE), who had been third overall so far, had already had problems beforehand and fell far behind.