Roglic remains in his role after firm slap in Vuelta: "I don't quite have the confidence yet"

Roglic put his teammates from Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe ahead only on the final climb. Giovanni Aleotti and Daniel Felipe Martinez did solid turns to get rid of O'Connor. Roglic then increased the pace, allowing him to ride off the other classification leaders one by one. Mikel Landa, at 35 seconds, remained the closest.

After such a slap, there should be some joy, but Roglic stayed in his role. "Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some. Now, I'm on the right side of the equation. I didn't expect I would gain so much time. I'm not concerned with those things; I'm mainly concerned with being able to do my best," he briefly addressed to the press after the stage.

Then silence fell. The Slovenian was looking for a bottle of water, and the moment the refreshment poured over his face, he continued his text. "Of course, it's nice to gain time and that things are going well, but it still hurts. We have to keep looking at it day by day," Roglic said in his characteristic words.

He could also go for the stage win with those legs, but they decided otherwise at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. "I don't quite have the confidence yet, so we decided to take a conservative approach," Roglic concluded before starting the descent to the bus.