10/29/2026
Primož Roglič turns 37 today. 🎂
The chain is off. On the final climb of the 2023 Giro d'Italia, Primož Roglič's bike bounces over a bump and the chain drops.
He stops. He puts it back on. He keeps going.
It is the second-to-last day of the Giro, and three weeks of racing hang on what happens in the next few minutes.
Geraint Thomas wears the pink jersey and starts the stage 26 seconds ahead. The route runs 11.6 miles (18.6km) from Tarvisio, Italy, to Monte Lussari. It's a mountain time trial, with the winner of the whole race decided by the clock.
Both riders have swapped from time-trial bikes to road bikes for the final climb.
Roglič has been here before. At the 2020 Tour de France, he wore the yellow jersey into Stage 20, another mountain time trial on the second-to-last day, this one to La Planche des Belles Filles.
Tadej Pogačar won that stage and took yellow. Roglič finished the Tour second overall, 59 seconds behind.
He didn't fade. Later that same year he won Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Vuelta a España. But a mountain time trial on the second-to-last day had already cost him one Grand Tour.
Now he is back in the same situation, three years later, on a different mountain. Monte Lussari's final climb runs about 4.5 miles (7.3km), averaging around 12 percent, with ramps up to roughly 22 percent.
The mountain sits just across the border from Slovenia, and thousands of Slovenian fans pack the slopes, cheering him all the way up. ⚡
Then the bump, and the dropped chain. He fixes it and rides on.
He beats Thomas by 40 seconds on the stage and wins the Giro by 14 seconds. 🏆 He becomes the first Slovenian to win the Giro d'Italia. 🇸🇮
He does his TV interview with tears in his eyes and his son in his arms. "It's not at the end about the win itself, but about the people, and the energy here," he says.
Not bad for a former ski jumper from Trbovlje, Slovenia. He was part of the team that won the junior world championship team event in 2007, and he didn't sign his first pro cycling contract until the 2013 season, with Adria Mobil.
His haul now: five Grand Tours, the Vuelta a España in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2024, plus that 2023 Giro, and Olympic time trial gold from Tokyo in 2021.
Three years after a mountain time trial took the Tour from him, another one handed him the Giro.
Happy birthday, Primož.