"C'est la vie, eh," Jai Hindley said once he had begun to warm down outside the Bora-Hansgrohe bus in Culoz after he had descended from the finish of stage 13 of the Tour de France atop the Grand Colombier.
Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard continue to inhabit a separate realm from everybody else, but Hindley remains steadfastly in his place as the race's third man. The Australian limited the damage better than most on the mountain to retain third place overall ahead of the race's entry into the Alps.
The 17km haul to the finish was the lone classified climb on Friday's leg in the Jura, and the summit finish repeated the same truth as every other mountain on this race, namely that Pogačar and Vingegaard are in a class apart.
When Pogačar and Vingegaard surged in the final 600 metres, Hindley was unable to follow, but he limited the damage as best he could. He placed sixth on the stage, 1:05 down on escapee Michał Kwiatkowski and 15 seconds down on the irrepressible Pogačar.
In the overall standings, he is now 2:51 off Vingegaard's yellow jersey, but still in third place and now with a buffer of almost two minutes on Carlos Rodríguez.
"It was a shorter stage today and pretty tough. The last part of the climb was really fast and also pretty crazy with all the fans on Bastille Day," Hindley said. "I'm feeling alright and I'm happy to put some time into the guys behind, but unfortunately I lost some time to the guys in front."
As Hindley clipped into his pedals outside his team bus, a Bora-Hansgrohe soigneur held up a phone to show him the current state of the revised general classification, though the Australian already had a reliable overview of the lie of the land from his position on the road.
In the final 600m of the climb, he saw Pogačar and Vingegaard move beyond his grasp, but he knew that he had put time into every other podium contender save Tom Pidcock.
"Pogačar is pretty explosive on a finish like that, so when he attacked, I also did my own effort full gas to the finish and I just gave everything," Hindley said. "I was running out of gas at the end there, the legs were not turning anymore, it was pretty hard."
Hindley, winner of the Giro d'Italia last year after placing second overall in 2020, is riding his first Tour, and the race has already been garlanded by a solo stage victory in Laruns and a day in the maillot jaune. He lost the tunic to Vingegaard the next day at Cauterets, but it's hard to class his maiden Tour to date as anything other than a success.
All year, Pogačar and Vingegaard have been the overwhelming favourites to win this race. Hindley, for his part, has lived up to his billing as potentially proving the best of the rest.
"I think it's been like every Grand Tour, with a lot of ups and downs, a lot of tough moments, but also a lot of good ones," he said. "It's my first Tour and I'm really enjoying it: the atmosphere and the racing is incredible. It's really like another level, and I'm pretty happy to be here."
The summit finish at Le Grand Colombier was only the opening phase of a triptych in the mountains as the Tour enters the Alps on Saturday with a demanding stage to Morzine.
While Friday's leg was tactically straightforward, a shoot-out on the Grand Colombier, stage 14 has altogether more strategic permutations, with the Col de Cou, Col du Feu, Col de la Ramaz and Col de Joux Plane all on the menu before the plunge to the finish.
"I think tomorrow will again be super tough, maybe similar to yesterday, with a big fight for the break," said Hindley, who made of point reconnoitring the Alpine stages ahead of the Tour, including Sunday's testing outing to Saint Gervais-Mont Blanc. "The weekend coming up is really tough. I looked at stage 15 a couple of weeks ago, it's going to be a cracker."
Before climbing aboard the Bora-Hansgrohe bus, Hindley also had a thought for his friend and fellow West Australian cyclist Connor Lambert, who was tragically killed in after being hit by a truck driver in Belgium this week.
"I've lost a pretty good mate of mine from WA, he's in my thoughts all the time," Hindley said. "My heart goes out to him and everyone back home and his family. It's really not easy to race every day when you lose a mate like that. It's really tough."
