After the heartbreak of withdrawing from Tour de France due to the injury, Primoz Roglic set a sensational time of 55:04.19 to take the gold medal in men’s cycling individual time trial at Fuji International Speedway at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The Slovenian two-time Grand Tour winner has had a tough few weeks after crashing on the 3rd stage of Tour de France, before riding the Olympic road race where he finished 28th.
Roglic was untouchable on Wednesday in the individual time trial, as not a single rider was able to finish within a minute of his time. A resurgent, Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands) took silver with a time 1:01 down on his Jumbo-Visma teammate.
After the race Primoz told the reporters: “It’s beautiful. This thing is quite heavy actually. But for me it’s just incredibly nice after all the hard things that happened recently to me and all the hard work that we put in from my side, from the family side, from the people all around me that today I managed to win the gold medal and be Olympic champion. It’s super hard. Especially when you know things are not going the way that you would like to. In the end, I worked hard and I always try to keep believing. That’s me, it’s Primoz. Everything is always possible every day and I just went out and I had nothing to lose.”
In the early stages road race on Saturday, Belgium and Slovenia made their intentions clear by working on the front of the bunch, and it would be these two teams that would control all day. But, Richard Carapaz (Ecuador) put in a blistering ride to take the gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics men’s road race.
Wout van Aert (Belgium) led in the chasers to take silver, with two time Tour de France winner (2020 and 2021), Tadej Pogacar (Slovenia) scoring bronze medal.
Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogacar have been showing the cycling world they are two of the best riders ever for quite some time now and at the postponed Tokyo Olympics they have written history with winning the first Slovenian cycling Olympic medals.
