Legendary soccer coach Vladin Boshkov tended to draw a line in the controversy with a simple phrase and philosophy when it came to decisions against his Sampdoria team. He said, “When the referee blows the whistle, it's a penalty,” and that such arguments were a distraction from the task at hand and a waste of energy.

Primoš Roglic seems to share the same worldview as the Serbian soccer coach.

He was handed a 20-second time penalty by the UCI race commissaire for drafting behind the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team car on stage 15 of the Vuelta a España. However, he complained little about the sanction when asked about it Monday morning before his rest day ride.

“I can't change the time penalty I received yesterday,” he said in a video call.

“They gave me 20 more seconds; 20 seconds less is certainly better, but 20 seconds more is also acceptable.”

Roglic was up to the red jersey group at the time and had swapped his normal bike for a single chainring, low gear before the tough final climb to Kuitu Negru. [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] He put in an incredible performance, gaining time and pulling away from all of us to ride alone.

On stage 13, when he shaved nearly 2 minutes off O'Connor on the slopes of Puerto de Ancares with just under 4km to go, Roglic seemed to be moving inexorably toward the overall lead.

He caught O'Connor again on the Quitu Negre, but the Australian, Mas, and Richard Karapas were in the mix before the final week.

“It's pretty hard to predict these things,” said Roglic, repeating Boshkov's old line, “Every soccer match starts with a score of 0-0, so it's unpredictable.”

“It's really hard to point out which places you can gain time. Sometimes you gain more than you thought you would, sometimes you lose more than you thought you would. We're still a minute off and we're definitely better than we were a week ago. We just have to do our best from tomorrow until Sunday.”

If Roglic wins the Vuelta, he will tie Roberto Heras' record of four wins and become the second oldest winner in history, after Chris Horner, who unexpectedly won the title in 2013 at age 41. [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]