Primoz Roglic successfully ticked off another stage in this year’s Tour de France and turned his attention to the final 48 hours of the race in which, with the stage to Paris on Sunday a formality, he will defend his overall lead in the mountain time trial on Saturday, from Lure to La Planche des Belles Filles.
Escorted as ever by the relentless Jumbo-Visma team, Roglic, in the yellow jersey since stage nine, was a discrete and untroubled presence on stage 19 to Champagnole, which was won with a solo breakaway by Denmark’s Søren Kragh Andersen, already a stage winner in Lyon, of the Sunweb team.
“Two wins in the same Tour de France,” Kragh Andersen said. “I’m speechless. I could never have dreamed about something better.”
The main drama had centred on the battle for supremacy in the green points jersey classification, between Sam Bennett of Deceuninck Quick-Step, and the seven-time winner, Peter Sagan, riding for Bora-Hansgrohe, but when the Dane attacked alone, 15km from the finish, the select group with him had no response and the anticipated sprint duel failed to materialise.
Saturday’s time trial covers 30km of rolling road before the tough 6km climb to the finish, but with Roglic leading his compatriot Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) by almost a minute there seems little chance of any radical change.
The two Slovenians locked horns in a mountain time trial as recently as June, with Pogacar beating Roglic by nine seconds in the Slovenian national time trial championships. But the Tour’s leader, already a winner of time trial stages in the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España, is unlikely to be dislodged from his position of power.
“I’ve already done some time trials in my career, and I’ve had all kinds of experience, some good, some not so good,” Roglic said. “So, for tomorrow, I’m feeling OK, I’m feeling healthy. I’m excited and just looking forward. Tomorrow it’s all on me. The team has done an amazing job.”
But as Roglic edged closer to final victory in Paris, differing accounts emerged of the bizarre incident after Wednesday’s stage to the Col de la Loze, following which his sports director, Merijn Zeeman, was expelled from the Tour.
Under the International Cycling Union’s (UCI) rules governing technological fraud – or motor doping – bikes are regularly checked or undergo an X-ray by UCI staff. UCI mechanics can further examine the bike by taking it apart. After Wednesday’s finish, Roglic’s bike was taken for what was described as a “routine” check during which the crank set was removed.
Zeeman was said by the UCI to have become “very quickly emotional” and “angry” from the start of the bike check, as Roglic’s bike was dismantled in front of him. He is then said to have started swearing and becoming intimidatory towards the UCI mechanic. Crank sets are not routinely dismantled but can, at random, be subjected to examination.
Zeeman and the Jumbo-Visma team later claimed Roglic’s bike was “damaged” during the check. “The bike was damaged and the crank set had to be replaced,” a statement said. According to a UCI spokesperson, however, this was not the case.
“The bike wasn’t damaged, the crank set was removed – that’s all,” the Guardian was told. The UCI also confirmed the whole incident was captured on video for its records and that Roglic’s bike had in fact passed the check without any problems.
The check and X-ray have become as routine as doping controls and the bikes of the yellow jersey and each day’s stage winner are automatically put through this process. Zeeman, already familiar with the protocol, had been offered the opportunity to use his team’s own mechanic but the UCI said he was happy to use its own.
Roglic, who earlier described Zeeman’s absence as “bad news,” took only three questions during his truncated post-race press conference. “We are not happy with it, it’s not a good situation for us,” he said of Zeeman’s expulsion from the Tour. “I heard yesterday evening and for me it was a big surprise. I was not present when it [the bike check] happened so it’s really hard to comment on any of this.”
While rumours of motor doping have long been circulating, there has yet to be a high-profile case in men’s racing, with the most notorious incident involving the Belgian rider Femke Van den Driessche, who was found to have a motor in her bike at the 2016 Cyclocross World Championships.
Speaking in 2017, the current UCI president, David Lappartient, said: “I worry that motors have been used. I have no proof but it’s not impossible. I want to be sure that we deliver a sport without doping and without motors. That’s the job of the UCI, to guarantee credibility.”