Chipping away at the lead day by day: Roglic satisfied after Stage 11: "Although I'll have to do this many more times"

Primoz Roglic is still in a strong position in the Vuelta, with two stage wins, a tough day before the rest day, and now another solid ride on Wednesday. He managed to gain about 35 seconds on the red jersey, Ben O'Connor. The gap has now been reduced to nearly three minutes. For the Slovenian, this is a reason to smile, though he is well aware that it will still be a daunting task to dethrone the Australian.

After the stage, he spoke with Flobikes about the race and the time he gained. "I'm definitely pleased with how things went. The guys set me up fantastically again. Thirty-five seconds is good, but phew, I’ll have to do that quite a few more times," he said with a wry smile about the remaining gap, which is still significant. "At least the legs felt good, so you win some time today."

Roglic then expanded on his current second-place position. "We can race the way we want," said the three-time Vuelta winner. "That's already a lot. We execute our plans and go for it. As long as we do that, it's a win. Today, we didn't aim for the breakaway, but we ended up there, and it worked very well how we handled the finish, with Nico Denz in the group helping me out."

Sports director Patxi Vila also provided some insight. "On that final climb, we hoped to be in a good position, with guys like Denz and Patrick Gamper in the group. That worked out really well. We have to see how Primoz holds up on longer climbs. We need to gain time here and there, and we did a good job of that on Wednesday."