Primoz Roglic sends message to Vuelta rivals with ominous climb to red jersey

The three-times Vuelta a España champion Primoz Roglic won the first mountain stage of this year’s race on Tuesday after a ferocious climb to Pico Villuercas. On a baking hot 170km fourth-stage, with the race crossing from Portugal into Spain for the first time, Roglic showed his strength to burst past Lennert Van Eetvelt and snatch the win.
Van Eetvelt paid the price for celebrating what would have been a maiden Grand Tour stage win too early, raising his arm in triumph then banging his handlebars in frustration as Roglic sneaked past on the line.
The Slovenian moved into the overall lead for the first time, taking the red jersey from Wout van Aert, who came home more than 10 minutes after Roglic. Van Aert’s teammate, the defending champion, Sepp Kuss, lost 28 seconds to his general classification rival and the American is more than one minute behind overall.
“It was not the main objective of the day [to win the stage],” Roglic told Eurosport. “But when you see the guys fighting hard in this heat I was happy to finish it off.”
While Roglic put down an early marker, João Almeida finished third and sits in second overall, eight seconds back. Enric Mas is third 32sec behind.
A tough stage featuring four categorised climbs was decided on the last of them as the two remaining members of a breakaway group – Pablo Castrillo and Bruno Armirail – were caught. The 14km Pico Villuercas climb topped out at 20% gradients in places, shredding the lead group with several big names unable to stay in contact with the front. Mikel Landa launched the first attack but was unable to sustain it and it was left for Van Eetvelt, Roglic, Mas, Almeida and Felix Gall to fight it out.
“It was tough [in] the heat,” Roglic said, adding he is still struggling with a back injury that led him to pull out of the Tour de France. “I definitely felt [my] back already after some hours. But I have to see, hopefully it doesn’t get worse.”