Roglič Rewrites History with Huge Giro d’Italia Comeback

Despite a dropped chain on the final climb, Primož Roglič won both the stage 20 time trial on Monte Lussari and the Giro d’Italia 2023 in dramatic fashion. The Slovenian lost around 15 seconds due to the incident but Geraint Thomas did not have enough watts and cracked in the final part of the climb that seemed to never end for the Welshman.

Monte Lussari probably is the hardest climb in cycling as it is very steep with a poor road surface, making even Roglič and Thomas look slow whilst pushing over 6 w/kg. That being said, it is hard for anyone to ride on 19-21% gradients and look like they are flying to the naked eye. The false flat 10.8 kilometres at the start were done with a time-trial bike while before the climb the riders changed to a road bike – Geraint Thomas even changed his helmet (very slowly), saving weight and making his head cooler for the climb.

It was a near-perfect 15 degree temperature on the climb for climbing. On such a steep climb even lower temperatures might have been better as riders are going so slow that there is very little cooling from air resistance like on a 7-8% gradient. On the climb, Thomas lost 37 seconds to Roglič, doing 6.26ᵉW/Kg for 29:27 min. The chain drop cost the Slovenian around 15 seconds or 0.05 ᵉW/Kg (including the time when the bike stopped and the lost time due to inertia). Without it he would have beaten Thomas by 52 seconds in the time trial or 0.20 ᵉW/Kg on the climb.

Roglič’ 6.46 ᵉW/Kg* for 28:35 min (excluding time lost to the mechanical) is not that impressive by 2023 standards but it was enough to win against Thomas for whom this was the worst possible climb as a bigger GC rider. It is not a surprise that the very difficult third week prior to this time trial took its toll on the riders compared to ‘fresh’ performances earlier in the year.