Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) lost a victory over Paris-Nice on the last day of the race, after crashing twice on the shortened 92.7-kilometer stage from Le Plan-du-Var to Levens.
The Slovenian, who had a 52-second lead over Bora-Hansgrohe’s Max Schachmann, hit the deck on an early descent for the first time after being on the hilly 36km course through the finish line.
He was running fast again, even though he was wearing torn shorts and a road rash on his left hip, but later went down the same descent again, unseen to the television cameras.
While racing in the valley, about 25 kilometers from the finish line, he was caught in a rift in the peloton, and it quickly became apparent that he had crashed for a second time and also on the right a rift in his had shorts. .
Roglič had several teammates with him at the time, but quickly burned through them in the chase for the main group, who saw that Astana-Premier Tech and Bora-Hansgrohe were quickly ahead to take advantage of the yellow jersey accident.
The Jumbo-Visma rider quickly lost time, and by the 15 kilometers to go, Schachmann was in the virtual yellow jersey. Roglič continued to chase solo as Bora-Hansgrohe and Astana-Premier Tech took the lead at the front of the race, but lost more than three minutes to the stage winner, giving Schachmann a repeat victory in the race.
Roglic lost 3:08 on stage and tumbled to 15th in the final overall classification.
At the end, his teammate Steven Kruijswijk explained what happened.
“He crashed on the last descent, on one of the last corners, and he could not turn on the chain again, so he fell a little behind, and of course they started pulling,” said the Dutchman. . said.
‘There was a lot of wind in the valley, and with only three or four of us we could not close the gap. We tried to close it as soon as possible but could not come back.
“After the first accident, where he went down quite heavily, we got him in front again and tried to take control of the race. The last accident was really out of the blue, otherwise we could have kept the jersey, I think. “is shit for him. He fought to the end. If you look at how he showed him last week, he was the strongest in the race, but anything can happen until the last day.”