Roglic loses more time to super-domestique Lipowitz: "The stronger we are as individuals, the stronger we are as a team"

Roglic finished in 19th place, losing 5 seconds to Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, among others. But the Slovenian was not bothered by that at all. The always down-to-earth leader appeared relatively cheerful on the rollers outside his bus. “It was a hard day, yes,” he said on his team's social media. “But I'm happy to finish it off, and yeah, all fine.”

Due to the slight time loss, his teammate Lipowitz has now overtaken him in the GC. He would normally be the domestique, but Roglic sees him as an excellent man to have alongside him. “He's a very strong guy, as I said at the start. He finished third in the Dauphiné this year. It's good to have him around. The stronger we are as individuals, the stronger we are as a team. Then we can achieve better results together.”

Lipowitz himself had been struggling since the start of the sixth stage, like so many other riders. The pace was extremely high. “It was a super hard day from the start,” he said on the rollers next to his team leader. “It was a long fight until a breakaway formed, after which it calmed down a bit. Everyone knew that the final would be harder again, with super short but steep climbs.”

Visma | Lease a Bike pushed hard. In the final difficult meters, the German climber took the lead in the peloton, but he was eventually overtaken by Pogacar and Vingegaard, among others. Fifteenth place was fine, but the focus was not on a good result. “I think we did well there; the team did an excellent job. The most important thing is that we stayed safe and finished the stage well.”