Tour de France 2021 - ‘A great ambassador for our sport’ – Big praise for Primoz Roglic’s mentality
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Updated 04/07/2021 at 15:00 GMT
Despite his general classification hopes being in tatters Primoz Roglic has received huge praise on The Breakaway for the way in which he carried himself when he found himself in a tricky situation. Brian Smith said a lot of young riders could learn a lesson from him. You can watch the Tour de France live and ad-free on the Eurosport app and Eurosport.co.uk.
WATCH - Roglic takes time out to talk at the end of the race despite huge losses
Slovenian rider Primoz Roglic has been hailed as ‘a great ambassador for our sport’ after his positive reaction to a horrendous couple of days.
After a big fall in Stage 3 Roglic lost a lot of time during Friday’s Stage 7.
And any hope he had of clawing back time blew up pretty quickly as he struggled to keep up with the quick pace being set in the opening parts of Stage 8.
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Primoz Roglic gives his water bottle to a young fan
Image credit: Getty Images
However, Roglic was seen smiling regularly during the stage and was spotted chatting away at the finish line, to go along with a picture on Friday of him giving his water bottle to a young fan.
Speaking on The Breakaway after the stage Brian Smith hailed Roglic saying:
A great ambassador for our sport that all youngsters should follow.
"Not throwing the dummy out when things don’t go right."
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'All youngsters should follow' - Roglic hailed for his positive attitude
Smith was joined on the sofa by Orla Chennaoui and Daniel Lloyd, the latter of whom said “As I said in commentary it’s always sad to watch a champion fall from grace through a crash in the first week or at any point. It’s never easy to watch. It’s amazing really that these guys carry on.
“I don’t knwo who took the shot [the picture of Roglic giving his bottle to a young fan] but it was a fantastic shot of him, despite the massive disappointment of knowing he was out of the GC, a couple of seconds later he was giving a child his bottle. That would have meant everything to that young fan, and could make them a fan for the rest of their.
He’s amazing in the way he reacts to anything like that.
“We saw the same thing on La Planche des Belles Filles. He went straight up to Tadej Pogacar and congratulated him; most other people would have been so shell-shocked at what had happened that they wouldn’t have even had the frame of mind to do that."
Chennaoui asked Smith whether with his GC hopes over we should expect to see Roglic pull out on the rest day with the Tokyo Olympics coming up.
“Has to,” Smith replied. “If his goal was the Olympic games then he has to.
“If he continues on for the team then he will not do well for his country. Who pays him? Well his team do and they’ll have an influence in that but you keep him happy and let him do it.
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“I think we might see a couple of others maybe pulling out in the rest day which will be sad.”
The man who beat Roglic last year, Tadej Pogacar, had an astonishing stage that saw him move 1’48” clear of nearest rival Wout van Aert in the yellow jersey.
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