Despite suffering a crash early in the race, Roglič, riding for LottoNL-Jumbo, never looked threatened throughout the day and cruised through to a ninth-place finish in a time of three hours eight mins 28 secs on the final stage of the Tour of the Basque Country, which saw the riders travel 122.2 kilometres from Eibar to Arrate, giving him an overall winning time of 20:53:47 over the six stages.

Coming into the race, Roglič’s closest challenger was Spain’s Mikel Landa, who rides for Movistar, but he could only finish second in a time of 3:17:46, putting him 00:1:09 behind the tour winner in the overall standings.

Landa was pipped to the post by fellow Spaniard Enric Mas of Quick-Step Floors, who collected his first ever Tour of the Basque Country stage victory thanks to a time of 3:17:34.

Tomorrow sees the one-day Paris–Roubaix race take place in Northern France.

The 257km race is regarded as one of the toughest one-day races on the International Cycling Union (UCI) calendar as it features 29 sections of cobblestones, covering a distance of 54.5km.

Belgium’s Greg Van Avermaet, who won gold in the men’s road racing event at the Rio 2016 Olympics and is currently riding for BMC Racing, is among the favourites and will be looking to defend his title.

However, he is likely to face tough competition from Slovakia’s Peter Sagan, who rides for the in-form Quick-Step Floors team.

The 28-year-old, however, has been at odds with other riders in recent times and has questioned their commitment, particularly after what he perceived as a lack of effort to chase down Dutchman Niki Terpstra at the Tour of Flanders last weekend.

“The other teams didn’t respect the situation and collaborate,” he is reported as saying by the Daily Telegraph.

“It’s not just me that they need to beat.”