MADRID, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) began his fightback to try to win a fourth Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain) cycle race when he won a demanding stage 7 on Saturday.
Roglic finished 47 seconds ahead of overall leader Ben O'Connor (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale), cutting the Australian's advantage to 3 minutes and 49 seconds.
The Slovenian rider showed his strength on the climb up the demanding Sierra de Cazorla, which had ramps of over 20 percent gradient, while O'Connor struggled with the steepness and the climb and the heat of another day when the thermometer reached 40 degrees.
In contrast to previous days when the pace had been slower than expected, Saturday's stage was ridden at a frantic speed, with continued attacks of riders looking to get into the breakaway of the day.
A group of eight riders escaped after 60 kilometers, taking a lead of five minutes on a stage that barely had a kilometer of flat road.
The Israel Premier Tech team led the chase, considering the steep finish suited their rider Michael Woods and the gap slowly game down to around a minute and a half with 12km left in the stage.
Oier Lazkano (Movistar) attacked from the break on another of the day's continued climbs and rode away along with Harold Tejada (Astana-Qazaqstan) y Luca Vergallito (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Those three looked set to duel for the stage on the 20 percent gradient at the start of the final climb of the day, but Roglic had other ideas, with a series of attacks which saw him eat into their lead, with O'Connor starting to suffer in the last three kilometers.
Roglic crossed the line ahead of Mas, who moves into third place overall.
Sunday sees the last stage before Monday's rest day, but it also promises to be one of the toughest in the three weeks of the race with 178 sub-burned kilometers between Motril and Granada taking in three first category climbs in the Sierra Nevada, that could be decisive in the overall Vuelta result. ■
