La Vuelta 2020: Bradley Wiggins – Remarkable Primoz Roglic has proven he wasn’t broken by Tour loss

ByTom Bennett

Updated 08/11/2020 at 20:16 GMT

Bradley Wiggins spoke to Dan Lloyd and Sean Kelly at the end of the 2020 Vuelta a Espana in the final episode of the Breakaway this season. The trio discussed Primoz Roglic’s outstanding season and how Jumbo-Visma are deservedly the top team in the sport now, ahead of Ineos Grenadiers.

Primoz Roglic could have been forgiven for thinking it was happening to him all over again when Richard Carapaz and Hugh Carthy attacked on the final climb of La Covatilla in the Vuelta.

Roglic famously lost the Tour de France on the penultimate day when he blew up on the time trial up La Planche des Belles Filles, with the exceptional Tadej Pogacar taking the GC.

But the Slovenian star kept his cool in Spain and held on to complete an impressive comeback from that Tour heartbreak.

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“We sat here at the end of the Tour de France and were quite concerned about where he went from there and whether this could be the end of him winning the Tour,” Wiggins said.

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“The perceived shame and embarrassment that he may feel from losing that stage to Pogacar.

“I think I said at the time that the best thing he could do was get back training, get back racing, and he won the Liege-Bastogne-Liege, he’s now won the Vuelta a Espana and it doesn’t seem to have fazed him.

“He’s been on the podium in the last four or five Grand Tours that he’s been in. He’s an amazing athlete and a lot of it stems from his mental approach, nothing fazes him."

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Roglic’s Jumbo-Visma team enjoyed a remarkable season, dominating the general classification for much of the Grand Tour season to underline their strength.

And Wiggins says any doubts that the Dutch side have usurped Ineos as the best team in the sport are now gone.

“They have [unseated Ineos],” Wiggins said. “Lots of teams including Jumbo have really taken the structure of Ineos and what they were doing and tried to replicate it or take element of it.

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“They’ve got great individuals like Primoz Roglic, Wout van Aert, but then they’ve got great super-domestiques like Sepp Kuss this year who’s been a revelation. George Bennett has been fantastic and they just seem like a real good squad.

“But they’ve got a leader at the helm who they all respect and who is a real teammate himself who inspires the rest of them. They really are the number one squad this year and will go into next year as the number one squad.”

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