Colombian rider Miguel Angel Lopez won the toughest mountain stage of this year’s Tour de France, while race leader Primoz Roglic added a few crucial seconds to his advantage over rival Tadej Pogacar on Wednesday.

The much-vaunted 17th stage saw Roglic finishing 15 seconds behind Lopez in second place, while Pogacar trudged over the line 30 seconds behind Lopez in third place.

But with another tough day of climbing to come Thursday, Roglic remained wary of the threat posed by his Slovenian countryman.

The 105.4-mile trek’s final ascent to the Meribel ski station was the high point of this year’s race at 2,304 meters, winding up a Loze pass never before ridden and with tortuous gradients of 24%. Lopez timed his attack perfectly with just under 3 kilometers to go while Roglic accelerated away from Pogacar, who clawed some of the gap back but might have bid farewell to his chances of winning the overall title.

The event concludes Sunday, in Paris.

Roglic is 57 seconds ahead of Pogacar with four stages remaining. Lopez overtook Rigoberto Urán to move up to third overall and is 1 minute, 26 seconds behind Roglic. (AP)

Djokovic returns without incident: Novak Djokovic behaved better in his first match since being defaulted from the U.S. Open. The top-ranked tennis player was mostly courteous with the chair umpire and had no interaction with the line judges during a 6-3, 6-2 win over local wild-card entry Salvatore Caruso in his opening match at the Italian Open, in Rome. Djokovic’s performance came in sharp contrast to the scene in New York 10 days ago, when he was disqualified for unintentionally hitting a line judge in the throat with a ball.