Vinokourov gives a very strong opinion on Roglic's defeat

Primoz Roglic had logically won the race this Sunday on the Paris-Nice roads, after finishing 3rd in the time trial and winning 3 steps. But bad luck disrupted his plans and ultimately caused him to lose all hope of victory following two falls.. The Slovenian also impressed a lot with his tenacity in fighting to the end despite his dislocated shoulder and the lack of support in the 15 last kilometers. The Astana and Bora Hansgrohe teams, big winners of this incident with the victory of Maximilian Schachmann and the 2nd and 3rd places of Alexandr Vlasov and Ion Izagirre, did not hesitate to bury the wearer of the yellow jersey the second the information reached them. A very criticized behavior which quickly made us forget the small controversy surrounding the “lack of fair play” of the Slovenian in his victory at La Colmiane against Gino Mader. Fallen from his victory, Primoz, however, was very classy after the line by going to congratulate the German, who achieves the feat of winning for the second year in a row. Interviewed, Jumbo leader Visma once again showed great reserve when talking about the mistakes he made to justify his defeat, which probably reminds him of painful memories of summer 2020, when he lost the Critérium du Dauphiné on a fall and the Tour de France against the clock, each time in the last hours of the event. A challenge that the manager of the Astana team did not fail to support, who openly pointed the finger at his attitude as the main cause of his defeat : “I warned them that victory would be more in the descents than the climbs, because these weren't steep enough”, evoked the former winner of Paris-Nice to Ouest-France. “Maybe he thought he was the stronger and he was going to win easily, but you have to stay focused until the end…” he then added. A thinly veiled review, which contrasts with the opinion of many opponents of Roglic, who mostly spoke of bad luck themselves, without pointing the finger at Slovene and a possible too passive attitude on this final stage. We saw him very vigilant throughout the day, his teammates doing a lot of work to control the race and ensure his victory. Primoz Roglic is expected to appear at the start of the Tour of the Basque Country on 5 next april, before continuing with the 3 Ardennes classics and to try the double on the Dean of the classics.