Tour de France verdict: Primoz Roglic closes in on glory for Slovenia, indifferent to...

[ASFN Admin]

Tour de France 2020, stage 19 – full results and standings Primoz Roglic is pretty much inscrutable at the best of times; his face, like his riding style, measured, calm. When he is wearing a face mask it is well nigh impossible to tell what he is thinking. So when the 30 year-old Tour de France champion-elect was asked in his yellow jersey press conference on Friday for his reaction to the fact that his sports director at Jumbo-Visma, Merijn Zeeman, had been thrown off the race for “intimidating” and “insulting” a UCI official who was trying to check his bike for possible mechanical doping, unsurprisingly, he did not give much away. “Um, yeah. For sure we are not happy with it,” Roglic answered. “It’s not a good situation for us. I heard it yesterday in the evening and also for me it was a big surprise. I wasn’t there when it happened so it’s very hard to comment on any of this. But definitely it’s not nice that he cannot be here any more.” It was consistent with Roglic's response to pretty much everything that has been thrown at him at this race, on or off the road: unflappable, unexcitable, dour even. It may help to explain why some struggle to warm to him. And why there has perhaps been less fuss made about Roglic other winners in recent years. For that is surely what he is about to become. Roglic will be crowned Slovenia’s first Tour champion in Paris on Sunday unless something truly disastrous befalls him in the individual time trial. Stage 19, from Bourg-en-Bresse to Champagnole, produced few fireworks in the general classification battle. Danish rider Soren Kragh Andersen ultimately claimed his second victory of the race - and Sunweb’s third - attacking brilliantly from a 12-man breakaway 16km from the finish and soloing to the line, 53 seconds ahead of Luka Mezgec [Mitchelton-Scott].

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