Primož Roglič has won his third Vuelta, with his strongest ever finish in a Grand Tour; claiming the concluding TT stage on Sunday at the end of a race where he never looked under pressure.
The Slovenian, riding for Jumbo Visma, was best in the 33.8km test from Padrón to Santiago de Compostela. He caught his two minute man, Enric Mas (Movistar), as they both finished in the pilgrimage city in Galicia.
Roglič added his stage win in the TT to the three others he took along the way; claiming the opening TT three weeks ago in Burgos as well as stage 11 to Valdepeñas de Jaén and stage 17 to Lagos de Covadonga.
While 31-year-old Roglič has often been shaky in the final week of Grand Tours - losing the Tour de France last year on the penultimate stage and going close to losing the Vuelta on the final day in the mountains last year - he looked at his best this time around in the final week.
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He dropped Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) after the duo went on a 60km breakaway on stage 17, to win solo. He also put time into all of his rivals the following day, distanced Bernal on Saturday and then finished with victory in Sunday's TT.
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He won the stage by just 14 seconds from Magnus Cort, the EF Education-Nippo rider who was hunting for a fourth stage win of this Vuelta. Thymen Arensman, the 21-year-old Dutch rider with Team DSM, was 3rd at 52 seconds.
While it was relatively tight for the stage win over Kort, the overall winner put huge time into his general classification rivals. After Roglič in the TT, the best of the GC men was Bernal - 6th at 1:49 - followed by Mas - 9th at 2:04 - with Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious) 17th at 2:52.
Overall, Roglič ran out the winner by 4:42 from Mas, with Haig filling the final spot of the podium at 7:40. Roglič's winning margin over Mas was the biggest since Alex Zülle (Once) won the 1997 Vuelta by 5:07 from Fernando Escartín (Kelme-Costa Blanca).
Michael Storer (Team DSM), who won stages 7 and 10, took victory in the climbers' classification. Fabio Jakobsen (Deceuninck-QuickStep) took the points classification after wins on stages 4, 8 and 16. Gino Mäder (Bahrain-Victorious) won the young rider classification, with 5th overall, and his team took the team prize.
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